


A Fifth of Whiskey and Two Aces

by Guede



Category: Aerosmith (Band), Bon Jovi (Band), Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Mary J. Blige - Fandom, Pink (Musician), Rock Music RPF, Steven Tyler (Musician), The Runaways (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Alternate Universe - Western, Bad Flirting, Codependency, Crack Treated Seriously, Drug Addiction, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, Families of Choice, Getting Together, Guns, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Interracial Relationship, Jealousy, Light Bondage, M/M, Reunions, Teasing, Topping from the Bottom, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vampires, Weird West
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:20:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 53,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27392593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: If the Old West had had supernatural monsters and eyeliner.
Relationships: Alecia Moore | Pink/Mary J. Blige, Cherie Currie/Joan Jett, David Bryan/Tico Torres, Joe Perry/Jon Bon Jovi, Joe Perry/Steven Tyler, Jon Bon Jovi/Richie Sambora
Comments: 10
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LiveJournal in 2012. Not intended to be historically accurate.

The new batch of city folk came off the morning coach and wrinkled their noses as they patted off the dust. One of them swept his gaze down the street, caught sight of them and before his lip even curled, David was stepping back into the shade of the gun shop.

It wasn’t that he was ashamed. There were good reasons for looking like they did, and every single one of those soft city bastards would know about them before the day was over. You wore your hair long to keep the swarms of biting flies off the back of your neck and out of your ears, and every morning you rubbed kohl around your eyes because it cut the sun down to bearable. It glinted different out on the plains, doubling and redoubling till it could burn the sight out of a man for good. Out here, where the grass was yellow and long and flat instead of green and soft, and all that whispering you heard in the wind was the edges of those blades sharpening themselves for any uncovered flesh.

He wasn’t ashamed. But he was tired, and coming off a ten-mile drive after what had been an awful month anyway, and he wasn’t up to handling the extra irritation. “Done yet?”

Nothing from inside except the clinking of metal on metal. David didn’t even have to look over his shoulder to know that Richie was still gawking over the racks, as if the man didn’t have enough guns to make walking around his bunk an exercise in poor judgment. He thought about dragging Richie out of there, then sighed and resettled himself against the wall.

“Still in there?” Alecia sauntered up the porch. She gave the staring group a careless nod and then dropped back against the hitching rail. “Poor things, aren’t they? They always look so confused.”

“Can’t really blame them when you’re around,” David said, looking her up and down. Alecia was a little narrow in the shoulders, that and pretty no matter how much she tried to sneer it away, but the short hair and height and lanky walk made most people look twice. He grinned when she absently slapped a fly away from the back of her bare neck, then dug out a neckcloth and offered it to her. “You should just give up and grow it out like the rest of us. It’s not like anyone’s going to take you for a good girl.”

She took off her hat and used it to smack away the cloth, but her lips were curving up along with his laughter. Her hair looked even more like bone than usual and she caught him watching, then shrugged and sifted one hand through the strands to get off the dust. “Wind’s rising. I’m thinking a sundowner’s blowing up, so best we pick up this hunter and get the hell out.”

“Tell that to Richie,” David sighed. When she actually took a step forward, he straightened up and got ready to block the door. Richie was easygoing and Alecia didn’t start more fights than found her—even if that was more often than any other of them, man or woman—but they were all a little on edge today and David would rather be careful than find himself scraping up bail again. “Look, I haven’t seen them yet, so he might as well—”

“Might as well what?” Richie pushed open the door and paused, blinking hard at the sun. Then he pulled the brim of his hat lower and came the rest of the way onto the porch. “Talking shit about me, Lemma?”

“Just giving me the news about your riding preferences,” Alecia drawled. She was looking at the shiny new rifle tucked under Richie’s arm. “Didn’t get one for me?”

Rolling his eyes, Richie let the door fall shut behind him and ambled by them to look at the coach. He did tip the rifle so Alecia could look at the engraving on the butt, so he must’ve gotten a good bargain on it. “Darling, you don’t get your presents till we’re in private.”

Alecia laughed and gave the butt a pat. She glanced over her shoulder, then looked again, the lines of her face sobering. Richie was still staring himself and David finally decided he’d better see what was so disturbing.

“Oh,” he said under his breath. “Oh, damn.”

“That son of a bitch—” Alecia looked back at David like she wanted to cut his throat, then forced herself to breathe out. She shook off his hand and put her own on the rail, squeezing it till he heard the wood groaning. “Right. Can’t shoot the boss.”

“God, I wish we’d gotten that drink first,” Richie muttered.

Neither of them looked like they were going to do the honors. A flash of anger went through David—the other two might have more reason to hate the boss than he did, but at the end of the day they all did hate him—but he made himself swallow it. Matters would be bad enough without them starting on the wrong foot, and at least he cared about that. He swallowed again, hoping his last meal would stay down, and then took off his hat and went down the stairs to greet the man holding all their contracts.

“David,” the bastard said. He smiled thinly at David’s curt nod, then slowly looked up. He waited for Alecia and Richie to acknowledge him as well. “So I hear we’ve got losses.”

“Four steers. I didn’t think that would worry you so much,” David replied. He was relieved to hear that his voice was steady and not too obviously tight.

The bastard spread his hands, shaking his head, playing the father. “Of course I’m worried. I count every loss a failure.” He put his arms down and stepped softly closer to them, looking more like a snake in a well-tailored suit than ever. “And then there was the…ah, _manner_ of their death—”

“Did they see it?” said an unfamiliar voice.

An equally unfamiliar expression flicked across the bastard’s face, so quick that David thought he might have imagined it. But then the bastard turned around, stiff and measured, and David realized the man really was…not rattled, but clearly off-balance. He probably hadn’t been interrupted in years, what with having every local lawman on his payroll. And not only that—not only _that_ , it began to dawn on David, but the boss wasn’t even going to take his pound of flesh for it. Couldn’t. And then David finally looked at the man who’d done it to him.

* * *

Jon hated these. He knew the territories ran by different rules, knew enough that sometimes keeping any kind of order was an achievement, but there were kings of the land and then there were those who just lorded it over the rest. This one clearly was one of them and the closed, stony faces of his bondsman told plenty of tales all on their own.

But he did have something killing his cattle, and it did sound like something beyond the pale. He’d bothered to come to the capital to follow up his application for a hunter, so Jon had his duty to help the man. Or at least help the man’s ranch, and maybe give him one less reason to terrorize his bondservants.

“Maybe we can go sit down somewhere, and start going over what we know,” Jon added. “The sooner I get an idea of what it is, the better.”

His hire started, as if Jon had just suggested they take a walk into the salt flats for a drink, and then gave him a forced smile. Man didn’t like having his humiliation interrupted. Well, Jon wasn’t answering to _him_. 

“All right.” The man looked at Jon for a few more seconds, then abruptly threw back his shoulders. He exchanged a couple clipped comments with David, the one who’d greeted them first, something about cattle they’d just brought in, and then gave Jon a perfunctory introduction and carte blanche to help himself to the assistance of the man’s bondsmen before wandering off to ‘see to their housing.’

Jon didn’t believe for a second that that was it, but it’d been a long damn trip out here and he didn’t rate the man highly enough to come up with a scheme of revenge before he had had a good meal and a decent rest. So he turned back to the others, gave them his most pleasant smile, and offered his hand.

“David, like you heard already,” David said, taking it. He had odd calluses on his fingers, more than what ropes and guns would leave, and a curly bush of blond hair to rival Jon’s. He smiled back and it seemed mostly genuine. “And this is Alecia and Richie.”

Alecia had a machete and a Winchester strapped to her back, and eyes that measured up Jon but didn’t quite know how to make the calculations. The measuring was to be expected; the hesitation to draw a conclusion was not and he accordingly noted her as one with at least a half-decent mind.

Richie hadn’t stopped pointing his rifle at Jon since Jon had walked up. He grunted his greeting, but did bend forward to shake Jon’s hand. “You’re the hunter?”

“Yes.” Jon looked over their varying degrees of suspicion again, then suppressed his sigh. This was going to be one of those trips. “So—”

“You’re prettier than David, here,” Richie said. When Jon looked at him, the man’s face was pulled into an expression of innocence. Except for his mouth, which was twitching enough to tell Jon Richie probably wasn’t known for his pokerface. “How many notches you got, Jon?”

Oh, Christ. One of those, too. “I’ll be happy to relate my credentials to you,” Jon said, very calmly. He absently noted that David did not appreciate being dragged into this idiotic posturing. “But it’s been a long day, and I think we could all do with a meal and a drink. It’d be my pleasure to pay for the first round.”

“Yours and—” The rest of Richie’s comment was lost to David’s hiss as the other man yanked Richie by the arm, dragging him back from the rail.

Alecia glanced over at them and Jon was interested to see as much irritation as amusement in her eyes when she looked at Richie. Then she blew out her cheeks, sloped back around to face Jon and nodded at the nearest tavern. “All right, let’s go.”

* * *

“Because you’re a fucking piss-for-brains fool sometimes, Sambora,” David muttered into his glass. He already had his hand over his face and now he started massaging his temple. At least, he told himself, they were leaving for the ranch in the morning. Back there he could make Tico or Mary trade off with keeping Richie from throwing himself into trouble. “If nothing else, he’s—”

“He _is_ pretty.” Richie kicked his chair back onto two legs, bracing his knee against the table, and peered at Jon, who was standing up at the bar with Alecia waiting for the next round of drinks. Then he looked at David, widening his eyes the way some whore had probably told him made him look believable. “I’m just being honest. Come on, David, he’d look better in a dress than Alecia or you.”

David put his other hand up to massage his other temple. “He’s a fucking hunter.”

“And he could hunt his way into a silk skirt and we’d still have to kiss his boots, because he’s that bastard’s,” Richie said in a bored tone. He stretched out his arm, got his shotglass and then downed what was left of his whiskey. Then he sighed and looked at David. “I’ll be good. Give me some credit, Lemma. I’m not planning to end up in the hole first thing we get back.”

“Well, you could have fooled me.” Beer. That was what Jon was paying for. Smart man, David thought. Richie usually could hold his drink but tonight was not a good time to be testing that. “Anyway, he’s not.”

“What?”

Sometimes David wondered how in the hell Richie had even survived to get out here. The man could ride, he could shoot, he could wrestle a steer to the ground, but what he knew about territory politics you could engrave on the head of a pin. “He’s not. He got assigned out here by the governor. ‘s not the same as working for the bastard. And don’t you wonder why the bastard went straight over and got him instead of coming down to beat the shit out of us? Not really like him.”

“No, because I don’t spend time trying to get into that bastard’s head.” Richie dropped his chair back to all fours as Jon and Alecia came back. “Maybe he’s waiting on Jon.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for you to be an asshole to a _government_ official,” David muttered. Then he pulled on his polite face and thanked Jon for the beer.

“You’re welcome.” Jon set his beer down, absently nudging at Alecia’s chair as he did, and while it wasn’t pulling that out for her, it wasn’t too far off. Surprisingly, she didn’t take offense; she and Jon must have made terms over at the bar. “So, about these dead cattle. Alecia was telling me the first one showed up a month ago.”

Alecia just nodded, slouching down in her chair and staring over at the far side of the room. Made sense once David saw the dip of the neckline on the woman clearing glasses over there. “Richie was on that ride.”

Richie was shooting the side of Alecia’s head a dirty look that had nothing to do with their usual bedroom banter. He winced a little when David stepped on his foot, then grudgingly pulled himself up. “I was doing the circuit on the northwest side, checking the—there’s a creek on that side, one of our main water sources. Wanted to make sure it hadn’t gotten choked up. I found it down by the water.”

If he was paying attention to the by-play, and he seemed smart enough to, Jon didn’t show it. He just looked attentively at Richie. “Look like it got attacked while it was taking a drink?”

“Maybe. The bank is steep there, and I thought maybe it’d just slipped in the dark and broken its neck at first.” Then Richie thumped his elbows down on the table, hard enough to pull Alecia’s nose out of the waitress’ cleavage. He began flicking his finger at the rim of his glass. “Once I got the body out of the water, I…”

He shut his mouth, and flicked the glass some more. He’d not talked about it to anyone that David knew of, except for the foreman because he had to explain why the hell he’d come tearing back to the main house, blowing one of their best horses for a good two weeks. The last time someone had tried to make him, he’d thrown them into the wall and then crawled into two bottles of moonshine.

“Did they take the eyes?” Jon asked. Like that was what anyone would ask. He was still watching Richie the same way, mildly curious, and that didn’t so much as crack when Richie jerked up his head.

David leaned back in his chair, suddenly glad that they were doing this in the tavern. Something was crawling up and down his spine and the noises around them, the clink of glasses and splash of booze and chatter, it was good for keeping his feet on the ground. He heard a rustle and caught Alecia chewing her lip, staring at Jon, probably thinking the same thing.

“So they did,” Jon said after a moment. He glanced down, then picked up his beer and drank some while Richie’s narrow-eyed gaze bored into his forehead. Then he looked up again. “Was there a lot of blood around?”

“It was in the water when I found it,” Richie finally said. He shifted back a little. “Could’ve washed away.”

“So did it look like there was much of a fight? I mean, did it look like it got killed in the water, or maybe was dragged into it after?” Jon put his arm up and propped the side of his face on his curled fist. A piece of hair fell forward into his eyes and he tucked it back behind his ear. He was pretty. Blond and blue-eyed and pretty, like something that should be wrapped in paper, not asking about fucking mutilated cows, and David could see the moment when that got to Richie.

His foot was still hovering over Richie’s when the roar of a gun did David’s work for them. David instinctively threw himself down behind the table, catching his arm on the seat of his chair on the way down. It clattered him on the head and in the side before he kicked it away, his gun under his palm, Alecia cursing to his left. He heard Richie hiss, heard the hiss catch, and risked a look up just as Jon cocked both barrels of an odd-looking gun. It had the butt-end of a shotgun, but the barrels were only about a third as long. And wider—not a sawed-off shot gun either. Bit like a cross with a carbine.

“You shot him!” someone gasped, and then it was dead silent. 

Half the people in the room, David included, had their hammers half-pulled, but none of them raised a gun except for Jon. He had been the one to fire in the first place, yanking that gun out from his coat and twisting in his seat as the recoil pushed him off the chair, and now he was kneeling by the table and drawing a bead on the flapping doors of the tavern. He was all hard lines now, looking like one of those profiles carved out of the canyon, and of course they weren’t pulling their guns on him. It wasn’t even a question, looking at him.

Jon stayed on his knees for another moment. Then, very slowly, like a rope uncoiling itself when pulled up, he put out one hand. He got his palm flat on the table and used it to push himself to his feet, then took a step towards the still-swinging doors. He still had his gun up.

“Who was it?” Alecia whispered.

“One of the buyers we sold to this morning,” Richie muttered back. “’cept he—he already had blood down his front.”

David spared a glance back at that and found Richie’s eyes locked on Jon. He twisted back around in time to see Jon go to the side of the doors, nudging one of them with the end of his gun. Jon paused, then moved his weight onto his back foot and David was in the middle of his sigh of relief when something dark blurred in the doorway. He saw the flash of teeth and—and then it disappeared in a blast of smoke as Jon shot it again.

“ _Jesus_.” Richie nearly knocked the table over as he shot to his feet. Judging from the yelps and curses around the room, he came close to taking a couple bullets from startling everyone, but he just made a beeline for Jon.

“The hell was that?” Alecia was a little slower getting up, and also remembered to give David a hand. “Did you see that?”

The smoke was clearing—the wind had begun to pick up—and David could see Jon wiping something off his face. It wasn’t blood, he thought at first. Too dark and sticky. Then he got to the door, just as Richie followed Jon out it, and saw more of the stuff pooling on the steps outside.

“Did you know him?” Jon was asking.

“We sold to him,” Richie said, a little shaky. He was staring down at the…well, it wasn’t human now. Not with the color of its skin, like the last ashes of a fire, or with that kind of maw. Jon’s shot had blown most of its head apart but a bit of jaw still hung together enough for David to see the fangs.

Jon looked up at them, still mopping blood off his face. “When?”

“This mor—” David heard someone running across the road and looked up, then felt his stomach turn even more. And when he’d just seen—he felt Alecia’s hand squeeze his shoulder and hesitated, then jerked his chin so Richie would see. “This morning. Boss here could probably say more about that.”

* * *

It was a substantial loss, putting down that many head, and the man couldn’t even recoup by selling the meat since they had to burn all the carcasses to be sure. But he’d be compensated by the governor and anyway, any sane man would take the loss rather than end up with a whole town of nightwalkers. Frankly, they were lucky that they could account for everyone who had come into contact with the cattle from ranch to town. In Jon’s estimation, they should be washing down their angelica with whiskey, and then adding another shot to celebrate.

“Excuse me,” Jon said, leaning in the doorway. He waited for the rancher to wind down his ranting and realize it wasn’t a lackey he could run off, then held up the bottle in his hand. “You’re the last. I need to see you drink it before I can certify you.”

After a moment, the rancher pulled back from the table and nodded coldly. He moved a little when Jon walked over, making only as much room as necessary, and then took the glass Jon poured for him. The man drank it without so much as a twitch, Jon had to give him that. Then he pushed the glass back into Jon’s hand so the rim dug into the palm. “Thank you. I appreciate the—”

“They have to, too.” Jon nodded at the three behind the table. Then he set down the bottle and glass, and pulled out his ledger. He heard the rancher’s teeth grind as the man realized Jon wasn’t leaving any time soon, but just opened up the book and flicked through the pages till he found the last filled row. Then he took out his penbox, opened it up, and frowned as he saw that the damn nib had broken again. He looked up at the man’s sigh. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting something? This should take a few minutes, is all.”

“No, I believe we were done for the night.” The rancher took a slow step towards the door, still trying to strip Jon’s face off with his eyes. Then he smiled coolly. “I think in light of tonight’s events, we should start as early as we can tomorrow. I’m concerned about the state of my property.”

“That was what I was going to suggest,” Jon said, smiling back. He pulled off the old nib and pushed on the new one.

After another moment, the rancher stalked out of the room. Somebody breathed out heavily, then snorted. Jon heard a bit of nerves in it and just got out the ink.

“I’m not drinking from his glass,” Alecia muttered, walking behind Jon. When he glanced up, she was getting fresh ones from a sideboard. She looked up at him, then grabbed the bottle. “How much?”

“’bout two fingers,” Jon said, looking at her arm. When she poured it out, her sleeve rode up to show a purplish stripe across the back of her wrist, like somebody had slammed something long and thin down on it. Fresh. “You can add some whiskey to cut the taste if you want.”

“I’ll get it.” David moved stiffly to his feet. He favored his left side. “Did you need any help with the cattle?”

Jon shook his head. “There’s two tax assessors who came in with me. I already got them to handle it, since they’ve got to value them anyway.”

“Sorry,” David said, uncorking the whiskey. He contemplated it for a moment, like he wanted to drink it straight, and then sighed and splashed a little into the glasses that Alecia passed to him. “Was our stock, we should’ve.”

“It’s handled,” Jon said, shrugging. He took the last glass from Alecia and made to pass it to Richie, only to find the other man writing in his ledger. Jon had just about talked himself into letting it pass when Richie looked up.

“Thought I’d save you the trouble of spelling my last name.” Richie traded the pen for the glass and then sat back, just about grinning at Jon. He was more relaxed than before, his amusement mostly free of sarcasm. “We’re educated, a bit. David here’s even a doctor.”

David rolled his eyes, then tried to drink his share by sipping and choked it back out. He batted off Alecia’s attempt to thump his back and just shot it back, then sat down hard, gasping. “This _works_?”

“For about a week, so long as you don’t get too much of their blood in you. That happens, I’ll have to make you drink the whole bottle.” Jon couldn’t help laughing at the way Alecia and Richie were eyeing their glasses. “The longer you wait, the worse it is.”

Alecia went white in the face, but she didn’t cough. Richie slammed his glass down and lunged across the table for the whiskey for a chaser. When he was done, he slumped back down in his chair and watched Jon write down Alecia’s and David’s names.

“You’ve still got it all over your neck,” he said suddenly.

Jon blotted the last letter in David’s name, cursed, and scratched it out so he could rewrite it. The worst part of his arrangement with the governor was not the paperwork, but the paperwork certainly didn’t endear itself to him. Then he pushed the ledger over to let the ink dry and began packing up his pen. “I already had mine.”

“Are you sure? Where are you?” Richie reached out for the book.

Jon got there first, not wanting any more blots, but Richie grabbed his wrist instead and used it as a hand-rest while he leaned over to squint at the pages. He leaned too far over, in fact, and his head was half-on Jon’s shoulder before Jon realized the man was still tilting. He hadn’t looked that drunk when Jon had come into the room—and Jon did have dried blood on his neck, and Richie might have just taken angelica but that didn’t mean he should be sniffing up that stuff.

“Jesus, Richie…” David was already grimacing from across the table, looking like he was praying Jon wouldn’t throw them out.

“Lot of them,” Richie said. He didn’t raise his head when Jon grabbed his far shoulder, trying to steady him. “You’ve been doing this a while.”

Jon pulled the man back—no struggling—and snagged his ledger before Richie could get at it again. “Couple years,” he agreed.

“I didn’t put that much in his.” David winced when he realized Jon had overheard him and Alecia. “We’re…”

“There a washbasin in there?” Jon asked, nodding at a door in the wall. Alecia gratefully acknowledged that there was, and passed him his penbox just as Richie started eyeing that. He told her to keep what was left of the angelica brew; he had plenty more of the dried mix in his bags.

The bathroom was a closet with a bucket on a stand and a mirror on the wall, but somebody had left the pitcher on the floor full, so at least Jon didn’t have to go back out. Another time he might have been amused at the snatches of scolding he heard Alecia and David giving Richie, but…maybe it was just the long ride to get here. But he looked in that mirror and touched the blood on his neck, and he wanted to put his head down on the washstand and close his eyes.

He had been doing this for a while. And he needed to still do it—Jon gave himself a shake, then poured some water into his hand and began scrubbing down his throat. His nails caught on some clots behind his ear and he was picking them off when the door suddenly swung open.

Richie was tall enough to fill out the whole of it, even without getting his hands up to hook over the lintel like he was. Somewhere in the background Jon heard Alecia stomping out and David’s despairing sigh, but Richie just looked at him. “I’m not drunk,” he said. “It takes a hell of a lot more to put me to bed.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Jon said after a moment. He ran out of water and had to turn to get the pitcher. The doorway creaked and he stilled, one hand on the pitcher handle. Then he lifted that up and let some water dribble into his cupped palm. “Want something?”

“How’d you know it was coming?” When Jon looked up at him, Richie appeared serious. He dropped one arm to lean on the washstand. “You weren’t even looking at the door.”

“Trade secret.” Jon offered up one of his blander smiles at Richie’s dissatisfied expression. “Look, I’ve just been—”

Richie unhooked his other hand from the lintel and pushed it across the space between them and rubbed at the blood behind Jon’s ear, like it was the most normal thing in the world. He lifted his thumb to look at it, but kept the rest of his fingers on Jon’s head, where they were starting to slide into Jon’s hair. Then he put his thumb back down and rubbed some more. “You have so fucking much of it on you.”

“Well, I blew its head off,” Jon said sharply.

He went to turn his own head off Richie’s hand, only to have the man laugh in front of him. Not at him, just…doing that while looking at him, the complete opposite of the stony-faced man he’d met earlier. What he was doing, was acting like he and Jon had known each other for years. Like he’d been cleaning the blood off Jon long enough for it to be funny.

Jon finally grabbed Richie’s wrist and pulled it down to the basin. He watched it while he splashed water over their hands. “You should be careful with that,” he muttered. “Even if you drink angelica, you should.”

“You didn’t, did you.” Richie stopped laughing and just stared at Jon. He was taking up all the room in the damn closet, nearly pushing Jon into the basin, and this close Jon could see where a strand of hair had stuck to the kohl lining the man’s eyes. “You’re something like half one, that’s why you hear—that’s what I heard about hunters.”

“I’ve heard that one too,” Jon muttered. He didn’t want to—he didn’t push when he didn’t have to, but he was going to give Richie to the count of three and then he would.

“You always work alone?” Richie asked, and Jon looked up, blinking. Richie swayed in, whiskey on his breath perfuming Jon’s face, and then stepped back into the other room, pulling his hand out of Jon’s grip. “You want to ride up with me tomorrow? Lemma—David, he and Alecia usually handle the wagon.”

Jon stared after him, but Richie continued on till he’d flopped back into his chair. He saw something Jon couldn’t see past the doorframe, cracked a joke about David’s dick, and then settled into an easy laugh when David snapped back at him. After a moment, when the two kept talking, Jon turned back to the sink. He intended to finish washing up and then find his damned bed as soon as he could.

* * *

The wind blew up for about two hours in the middle of the night, then died back to the occasional rattle at the shutters. That bastard they had to answer to came back round after Jon had left, but he must have found someone else to take it out on, because he just cuffed Richie a few times for not looking obedient enough. For once Richie held his tongue and took it, and they got to their rooms more unscathed than usual.

Not that either of the other two were meaning to keep it that way, David thought in exasperation. “There’s a curfew?”

“You heard the man,” Richie said, his head out the window. “Probably came in with us and everyone who might’ve had a problem got dosed up.”

“Anyway, we’re not going to be wandering around in the damn dark looking for them, are we?” Alecia finished knotting the rope to the bed leg, then yanked on it a few times. She grunted in satisfaction as the knot failed to slip, then stepped backward till she could tap Richie on the shoulder. When he looked over, she squeezed by him and shifted herself onto the windowsill. “Just going over to the whorehouse. Fifteen feet and we’re safe inside again.”

David sat down on the bed and watched Richie help Alecia get the folds of her coat over the sill. “If we’re caught, it’s not just him who’ll have a reason to whip us.”

“‘We?’” Alecia looked up, brows rising in surprise.

“No point in getting blamed for your nonsense for no reason,” David muttered.

Just before she dropped out the window, Alecia grinned at him. He rolled his eyes, and when he looked back at the window, Richie’s hat was dropping out of sight. David sighed, picked up his own hat, and went over to the sill.

Alecia was already halfway across the street, but Richie was loitering at the bottom of the rope. He gestured for David to hurry up, then cursed and hopped back as David slithered down the rope. “Warn a man, will you?” he hissed.

“Fine. Watch out.” David ducked Richie’s half-hearted slap, straightened out his coat, then grabbed at Richie’s arm as the other man started off. “Wait. What are we doing about this?”

“What? Oh.” Richie frowned up at the rope, then twisted on his heel. He and David saw the drainpipe at about the same time, but he was quicker, pulling the rope over till about half of it was tucked up against the line of the pipe.

That still left the other half stretching over the side of the wall, not to mention the open window, but Richie had already stayed longer than David would have expected. He hurried after Alecia while David hesitated a few more seconds, knowing they’d regret this in the morning. Then he gave himself a shake and went to catch up with the other two. In the morning was still a long damn time away, and after what they’d seen today, he could use a little distraction.

* * *

Jon waited till the brothel’s doors had closed behind the last of them before he shouldered his rifle and walked out from behind the hotel. He eased his way along the wall till he was standing directly beneath that second-story window, then began to bend down.

Then he changed his mind and pulled out a piece of chalk. From their faces, that trio wasn’t coming back for a good few hours. Hopefully the rest of the town was abiding by the curfew, but he wouldn’t be around to see to that. Or the wind might pick up again, and either way it’d ruin anything he traced in the dust.

He bent down and chalked along the very last board in the wall, then stood back to check his work. Went over one to make it crisper, and then went on his way.

* * *

The next morning wasn’t one of David’s best, but he was able to walk without feeling like his breakfast was going to come back up and so he thought he’d managed himself pretty well. Richie, on the other hand, could be _abominably_ cheerful when he wanted to be.

“Going to shoot him,” Alecia winced, watching the other man whistle his way into the stables. She had yanked her hat down as far as it could go and the shadow its brim cast still didn’t hide the green cast to her face. “Hell is wrong with him?”

“Stopped drinking after that first one.” David reshouldered his saddlebags, then reached out and steadied Alecia as she swayed just a little too much around the last corner. He mustered up a weak smile at Alecia’s disbelief. “Telling the truth, I swear.”

Alecia heaved herself through the stable doors, gestured rudely at the horse she’d startled, and continued on towards their wagon horses. “Why the hell would he do that?”

“Good morning,” said Jon.

He’d gotten a clean shirt, David idly noted. Still a little blood in his hair, but that did no harm, especially with the way the weak dawn light was slanting through the strands, all but giving him a damn halo. David felt Alecia straighten up, glanced at her and then followed her gaze to Richie, who had stopped in the middle of walking his horse out of its stall to stare at the back of Jon’s head.

“ _Oh_ ,” Alecia drawled under her breath. The corner of her mouth turned up, so quick that nobody not looking for it would have caught it, and then pulled out as she gave Jon a solemn nod. “’morning.”

“Your boss already came by,” Jon added after a moment. His tone was calm and polite and so were his eyes. “He said he had some business detaining him with the tax assessor, and that we could start without him.”

David’s stomach twisted even as he fought to not smile at the news. Bad that they’d missed the bastard, and what he meant by coming after, David didn’t even want to begin to guess—but they didn’t have to ride with him. If they made good time and the bastard’s business kept him long enough, maybe they could even get back to the ranch and then out in the plains before he caught up. He was one who looked better from across the prairie.

“All right,” Alecia said. The flat way she spoke told David she was thinking about the same. “Well, we’ll get the wagon around and meet you out front.”

Jon agreed, and then Richie followed him out, like it wouldn’t help to have three pairs of hands instead of two getting the horses harnessed. Sometimes David did wonder why he even bothered with the man.

Alecia’s laugh startled David. “No point in lassoing the idiot back now,” she said. “So is that what you were doing after I left?”

“What he was doing.” David stared after the other two men, then snorted and pushed himself back towards the stalls. He gave his bags to Alecia and went to lead out the horses. “I was just waiting to see how long Jon could keep up that polite act.”

“What, you don’t think he’s interested?” Alecia went out of earshot for about a minute, dropping their bags in the wagon, but took right up where she’d left off once David came out with the horses. “Or at least a little confused? I am. Last I remember, Sambora was still trying to get himself shot getting up in the man’s craw.”

“I don’t think there’s too much difference between that and him trying to be charming, sometimes,” David muttered. He gave the left-hander to Alecia and then began easing the other horse back between the rails. “Look, Jon shot that thing while he was sitting in a chair, in a fucking saloon, from—you remember the angle, don’t you? And he looks like the angel on top of the Christmas tree. Anybody’s confused here, it’s probably Richie. He likes a little bit of blood and a little bit of shine, but usually he’s not having them together.”

“Yeah?”

After a moment, David dropped the buckle he’d been about to do and looked at Alecia over the backs of the horses. She arched a brow but just waited for an answer. No joking.

“Well, if you ask me, Jon seems like somebody who’s never been confused a day in his life,” David finally said.

“That good or bad.” It didn’t sound like Alecia was asking a question, and when David glanced at her, she had her head down, tightening the girth strap. “I guess he knows what he’s doing about nightstalkers. Maybe about the boss too. Might keep us from getting killed.” 

She usually wasn’t one to dwell on the bleaker parts of their lives, and she’d been around through…things not quite as bad as nightstalkers, but still bad enough. Her voice wasn’t shaking and she went through the harness without dropping a buckle. Then she stood back, saw David watching her and started. Her hand lifted as if to cover that, then snapped down.

“At least we know what it is,” David said. He absently smoothed one hand over the horse’s back. “That thing walking right up to the tavern, that was—but now that we know, everybody knows what to do about them.”

“Even that bastard’s going to take it seriously enough to do what he should,” she finally said, nodding slowly. Then she turned and pulled herself up onto the side of the wagon. “But I don’t like it.”

David gave his horse one last look-over, then walked around the wagon, checking the wheels for any loose pins or cracks. “You ask him nicely, Jon might let you kill one. That’ll make you feel better.”

“I ask nicely, then you’ll keep Sambora from coming after me later?” Alecia teased.

“You two can work that out yourselves, and meanwhile Jon will probably go write in his book some more,” David snorted. He gave the last wheel a kick, then pulled himself up onto the seat beside her. “I don’t think he’s looking for a roll in the hay, that one. He’ll put up with Richie till Richie sees something else he likes, and then go on his way.”

* * *

Jon didn’t need too much sleep, but he did need rest. He’d been pleased to hear that he wouldn’t have to dredge up small talk for the rancher, but if the man had come along, that probably would have kept Richie from trying to talk his ear off.

No, he didn’t want that. Watching them move around that man was like watching beaten dogs eye the stick, and Jon’s tastes ran in the exact opposite direction. But he would have liked a quiet ride, just some time to collect his thoughts and breathe and let the horse do the work. He’d gone without that a little too long and he had a feeling it was starting to show. “I’m sorry?”

Richie shut his mouth and just looked at him. Looked older when he wasn’t talking, wasn’t finding every other thing hilarious without even waiting to see what Jon thought. The flesh smoothed back from his eyes so Jon could see how wide and watchful they could be, without the humor closing them up. Not that good humor was a bad look on the man either, if Jon was going to bother noticing, but…he wasn’t as thoughtless as his smile sometimes made him out to be.

“There wasn’t a lot of blood, or broken-up brush around.” Then Richie snorted. He kept his lips together for this smile. “I mean that first one I found. I don’t think there was—the water and the mud maybe could account for it. But the second one, that wasn’t done where we found it for certain.”

Jon almost asked whether they could go back to whatever nonsense Richie had been rattling off before, but stopped himself in time. He glanced back at the wagon, about twenty feet behind them, then pushed his hat back off his head and ran one hand through his hair, shaking out some of the tangles—hopefully in and outside of his skull. “You found that one too?”

“Fourth one too. Couple others ran across the third one, but three of them’ve been on the circuit I usually ride,” Richie said. His horse was starting to cut into the side of Jon’s, but he didn’t correct it till their legs almost knocked into each other. “Thing is, they weren’t babies, and what was left still took a couple of us to lift. Nobody found any wagon tracks around. So how’d they get out there?”

“Probably walked.” The sun was too bright to keep the hat off so Jon put it back on, and only then caught the stiff cast to the other man’s face. “No, that’s what I really think. It’s not—it’s bit like a disease, you know, and it can pass from cattle to people and back.”

Richie looked at Jon a little longer, then twisted in the saddle, dropping his reins. He rolled his shoulders back till something popped, then rolled that one again. “I think I heard something about that once, but didn’t really believe it.”

“Easier to believe it’s some crazy man with the strength of ten men carrying dead cattle around?” Jon asked.

“Well, they’re not men once they’re…when they get it, are they? Otherwise you couldn’t shoot them,” Richie retorted. He picked up his reins again, one-handed, and flicked them at Jon’s knee. His grin was back sneaking around his mouth. “Besides, makes you sound like you’re just a cow doctor when you put it that way.”

Jon laughed before he could stop himself. No, it didn’t sound so well that way, and while he had his issues with his profession, it certainly was not that mundane. And he was honest enough with himself to know that he wouldn’t care for a life that was. “Anyway, a steer’s bigger than a person. Can hold it longer without anyone noticing different. So what I think is, those cows wandered off when it started getting close to coming out, and then died.”

“So then where did it go?” Richie asked, sober again. He shifted uneasily in the saddle, throwing his horse off its pace, and ruffled his hand through its mane to calm it without taking his eyes off Jon. “And what do you mean, it came out? You mean it—”

“A stalker’s a living thing too. It gets inside and grows in your blood till it can go on its own, and then it doesn’t need you anymore,” Jon said. He didn’t much care for this part, explaining the details, and in all the years he’d been doing this he still hadn’t hit on the magic formula for telling it so people didn’t get that look in their eyes, like he was too close to being a stalker just knowing such things. He just never knew how they’d take it.

Richie whitened a little around the mouth. The color came back when he pursed his lips. “All right,” he finally said. He pursed his lips again. “So…then where’d it go afterward?”

He wasn’t much of a liar, Jon had concluded a while ago, but that didn’t mean he was showing his whole hand. Either that or he really was taking it that well, and after this long Jon was not going to bet his life on that. “Somewhere dark, or somewhere with more warm bodies. Or both. They can’t take sunlight when they’re out on their own, and can’t last more than a day or so without blood.”

The other man paled again. “I guess it doesn’t look too good that I keep finding them,” Richie muttered.

“You look good enough to be all right to me,” Jon said, some perverse demon stirring in him. It was a stupid slip, even if he was tired, and he really should feel worse about it than he did.

Richie stared at him with the look of a brained bull, mouth ajar, and Jon compounded his stupidity with a chuckle. The other man started, then pulled his mouth shut. His hat slid so a little sunlight touched his cheek and turned it up rosy.

“No, honestly, someone would’ve noticed that by now. At least I would’ve last night, when you drank the angelica,” Jon added, trying to sober up. “I mean, if you had had one in you, you wouldn’t even have gotten that down. You probably would’ve tried to kill me just for bringing it into the room.”

“You wouldn’t have let me get that close, right?” Then Richie pulled himself back, looking guilty. He started to go on, stopped, and then let out a frustrated sigh, obviously aimed at himself. “Look, yesterday I was a shit. I’m sorry about that.”

Jon shrugged. “I’ve had worse welcomes.”

“What, with your face?”

When Jon looked over, Richie’s arm was blocking his view. Then the man leaned back, Jon’s hat in hand, and fluttered the brim at Jon’s nose. With that smile, Richie not only looked younger, he also looked more than a little—well, most sensible people didn’t go fooling around like that once they knew who Jon was, let alone after they’d seen him kill a nightstalker. And then he laughed at Jon, tossing the hat back.

“Surprised David’s not more upset,” Richie added. “Before you came, he was—”

“Leave me out of it, Sambora.” While they’d been talking, their horses had lagged till the wagon had caught up with them. Alecia wasn’t on the seat anymore—she’d looked on the ill side earlier—but David was still there, ramrod-straight on the bench and glowering at Richie.

Richie looked over his shoulder, then hauled up his leg and hooked it over the saddle-horn so he could twist around. “What? I’m defending your honor!”

“Like hell you are. The day you defend my honor is the day I join the priesthood,” David snorted.

In an instant Richie had turned his horse and ridden it nearly into the side of the wagon trying to get up to dispute with David. The quick movement startled the draft horses and that clearly didn’t please David either, and he let Richie know it.

Jon clucked his horse into picking up its pace a little. He watched the other men bicker for a few more seconds, then turned forwards, sliding his hat back on. It was a fine day, with a clear road, and for at least the next mile they weren’t going to pass near any trees or buildings or outcrops that might lend some worrisome shade. He stifled a yawn in his hand, then looped his reins over the saddle-horn so they wouldn’t slip and let his body slacken.

* * *

They reached the ranch a couple hours away from sundown, still early enough for some of the hands to be just coming in for dinner. And of course the foreman was front and center, waiting for them.

The foreman didn’t quite know what to do when he spotted Jon, and it got worse when Jon opened his mouth and introduced himself, explained about the boss, asked if he was speaking to the one running the ranch, asked if they could discuss how they were going to handle the stalkers. Man was dead loyal to their bastard master and knowledgeable enough when it came to making their lives miserable—and about managing a profitable cattle venture, David grudgingly allowed—but he didn’t know much about those he couldn’t beat. He was reduced after a few questions to just ‘yessirs’ and ‘nosirs’ while Jon patiently tried to make the man be useful.

Alecia at least tried to hide her amusement, jumping down to walk the wagon around to the stables as fast as the draft horses would let her. Richie, like the thoughtless fool he was, sat on his horse and watched till David got Tico out to help drag the man away.

“Not that it’s worth it, since that son of a bitch was already looking your way,” David muttered, taking off his coat. He slapped it over his thigh a few times to take off the dust, then tossed it to Tico to hang up. “Next time you’re going with him.”

“What did _I_ do?” Tico asked.

“Nothing. David’s just bothered that our hunter’s got curlier hair than he does.” Richie caught up to David and passed him in the hall, using those damn lanky legs of his to slide first into the mess room. In short order he’d kissed Mary, ducked Alecia’s punch and slapped a couple other hands on the backs. “Anyone miss me?”

David took in a breath, then just shook his head and stepped back into the hall. He dropped his shoulders against the wall and breathed out slowly. Then someone tapped him on the shoulder and he almost went for his gun.

“Hey, hey.” Hands up, Tico hovered in the doorway. He grinned off David’s apology and then came all the way into the hall, pulling the door in behind him. “So, couldn’t have been that bad if Richie’s happy.”

“The boss came in with the hunter,” David said. He winced at the way the grin fell off Tico’s face. “He’s still back in town.”

Tico blinked once. Then he went down to the outside door. He peered out for a moment, pulled himself back in and put on the latch, and then came back to David. “Foreman just went with the hunter to the stables. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” David glanced at the door to the mess room—from the sound of things, they’d started passing out the plates—then pushed his shoulders back against the wall. He slid one hand back into his hair and twisted his fingers around in it, then dragged it out. Took a couple strands with him that he had to shake off. “Well, Jon—that’s the hunter—he seems sure it’s nightstalkers. One got into town in one of the steers we brought and got into our buyer, and Jon had to shoot him. And then all the steers got put down and burned.”

“That’s a good season’s money,” Tico said slowly. He cocked his head. “So…”

After a moment, David sighed. He pulled at his shirt till the tails came out on one side, then flipped them up long enough for Tico to see where the bastard’s ring had caught him in the ribs. “But he didn’t do too much more than that. Jon walked into it and I don’t think—I don’t think he cares for Jon. Or Jon for him, actually.”

“Still, I’m surprised he’s not coming down himself. That’s not going to be the last of the cattle we’ll lose, and the man does love his property.” Tico’s tone turned dry and dark on the last word. Then he shook his head, putting out his hand. He got a couple fingerfuls of David’s shirt and pushed it back behind David’s belt. “Foreman wasn’t that bad while you all were out. I think he was worried.”

“About what? You were all around, so it’s not like he would’ve been short of entertainment.” After they’d found the second dead cow, the foreman had called in all the outriders and told them to stay within a day’s ride of the main house. He might be a cruel son of a bitch but he did know enough to protect his boss’ property. They weren’t so cheap that he could afford to let them run into a nightstalker, though it appeared that a belt or a bullwhip was acceptable.

“Well, what if one of them got us?” Tico said. His hand was still in David’s shirt, doing a little more than trying to tuck it at this point. “Then we don’t really care if we pay off our bond or not, and he’s got—”

David grabbed the man’s wrist, then snorted as Tico took that as an excuse to pull him off the wall and nearly into the other man. He couldn’t help a hiss as Tico’s other hand felt up that bruise over his ribs, and then helped himself on purpose to the man’s shoulder to steady his stance. “You’re going to ruin my clothes, you could stop talking about what a son of a bitch like him thinks about.”

“All right,” Tico said easily. He stopped prodding that damn bruise, but his hand took its time coming down David’s side. “So why’s Richie so damn happy? Last time the boss showed up, he got himself in the hole before we were through dinner.”

“Because he’s a lunatic who’d toss a snowball at the devil if he thought he could get away with it?” David curled his fingers over Tico’s shoulder as the man got to an older bruise he’d forgotten about, then made them flatten. “He’s been flirting with Jon the whole day.”

Tico stopped at David’s hip, then looked up. “The hunter?”

“Says he’s prettier than me,” David added blandly. “Twice now, I think?”

“Oh, my God,” Tico muttered. “Always knew he was a bit wrong in the head, Sambora, but that’s a—”

They heard the clack of boots at the other end of the hall just in time. David stepped to the side and back, then let the swing of the door take him into the mess room. He held back for Tico to come through, only to stumble when the other man snagged his elbow on the way.

“Also, didn’t realize he was going blind,” Tico said under his breath. He dropped David’s arm once David was walking on his own, and didn’t look back either, but he knew damn well David was not supposed to be laughing right now. Bastard.

It got easier to stop smiling when the foreman ducked through the doorway. He was as tall as Richie, and built heavier. In his forties but the belly that pushed at his belt was no soft center; he could take down a half-grown bull as easy as breathing. He probably had never had a handsome face, but years of hard drinking had left a mottled web of broken veins across his cheeks and nose, and his hair was turning rusty. Jon, coming in behind him, looked more like a doll than ever.

“Listen,” the foreman said. Not something he usually bothered to tell them. “This here’s the hunter—”

“Jon,” Jon said quietly.

“—you’re to do as he says. And first thing is, everybody but you three got to drink what he gives you,” the foreman went on, with an uneasy look at Jon. He pointed out David, Richie and Alecia. “Then, like we were doing, lock up for the night. Nobody out till the morning. All right?”

He didn’t usually bother to ask that either, but even Richie wasn’t going to be stupid enough to offer an answer. The foreman stood there, watching them for a slip, and when they stared back in silence, he gave them a curt nod. Then he turned to go and Jon cleared his throat. The foreman nearly broke his ankle whirling around, but Jon didn’t so much as glance his way.

“In the morning, I’ll need riders to sweep for infected cattle,” Jon said. “Let me know at breakfast if you’re willing.”

“They’re willing,” the foreman grunted.

Jon nodded, no particular expression on his face. “Better to talk about it in the morning.”

The foreman stared at him for a moment, jaw muscle slowly working, and instinct made David stiffen. But Jon just met the stare as if there was nothing interesting about it, and eventually the foreman grunted an assent. He gave the rest of them a last glower, then stalked out the door.

“All right,” Jon said. He toed the door shut and only then did David notice the bottles he was carrying. “Now, I’m sorry for having to put you through this,” he went on, setting the bottles down on the table, “But it’s got to be done.”

“Where’s your book?” Richie said.

Jon looked up sharply and David thought that calm of his wavered a little. Then the man shrugged and smiled, as bothered by that as he’d been by the foreman. “I’m coming to that. Have a little patience.”

Alecia barked out a laugh before Richie could reply and then everyone started moving, getting out of their seats, pushing and shoving each other. Someone palmed David’s back and he glanced back, then nodded to where Richie was making himself useful getting Jon cups. Of course.

“All day with that,” Tico said sympathetically.

“Maybe I’ll get in line just for the whiskey,” David muttered back. Then he got the other man by the arm and forced him up behind Mary. “No, damn it, you’re taking your turn too. No point in suffering alone.”

Tico slapped his hand through David’s hair, not catching any scalp, but he went. David got himself a seat and a bowl of stew, and then finally let himself settle into place. Damned if he wanted to stay here, but there were still things he was glad to get back to.

* * *

The foreman was about as Jon had expected, given the man who owned the ranch, except for not being very nosy. He came back briefly after dinner to show Jon where he was sleeping and then left before Jon could even thank him. Not that Jon was inclined to do that, even if it was good manners, but…Jon sighed and set his bag down on the floor, then surveyed the room.

Bare and neat, and clearly not used regularly. Jon went over to the bed and began to put his hand on it. Then he stepped back and turned around, and blinked at the man leaning in the doorway.

“Thought you might want something,” Richie said. He had a kettle in one hand that was still steaming from the spout.

After a moment, Jon turned back to the bed. He prodded the mattress with his hand, then went up to the head and flipped back the covers, listening to Richie’s tentative footsteps. “You’re sure trying hard.”

“What?” Richie set the kettle down on the sideboard, the one other piece of furniture in the room, and then gazed around the room. He had an odd, pinched expression, and his left foot was moving back and forth in a small arc. His right hand kept closing and unclosing by his hip. Then he glanced at Jon as if Jon had been the one to start the conversation.

“Thank you,” Jon said. When Richie’s brows lifted, Jon pointed at the kettle.

“Oh. Oh…didn’t put anything in here,” Richie muttered. The abrupt jerk of his shoulders as he turned was a far cry from his earlier looseness. “I’ll get you a bowl.”

Then he went out. Jon looked after his retreating back, then decided he’d just see if the man returned. The water was welcome: with how busy he’d been last night looking into the stalker that’d made it to town, Jon hadn’t had a chance to do more than scrape blood and dirt off the parts people could see and then pull on his spare shirt. It had been a little hotter than he usually liked, but the night was turning cold and the room had at least one draft.

Jon considered that, rubbing a handful of water over the back of his neck, and then left the kettle to cool while he checked the shutters on the windows. They all seemed sound and as snug-fitting as could be made, and he was putting the latch back on the last when he heard a step and a metallic ringing.

Richie stood there with the bowl held up like a tambourine and his other hand still poised to flick the bottom. Then he grinned and came all the way into the room. “There you go.”

He was getting the kettle before Jon had even gotten out half a thanks, and by the time Jon had crossed the room, all the water was in the bowl and Jon could just take that. It was small enough to hold in one arm and the steam coming up felt warm, not boiling. Jon gave in and scooped up some, then let it dribble over his right cheek and down his jaw. The heat went straight through his flesh and to the bone, uncoiling things that had been knotted up so long it almost felt wrong for them to be otherwise.

“You want something to put you to bed, too?” Richie asked.

Jon looked up. Water got in his eye just then and he had to blink hard to clear it out. He saw the tail-end of the flicker going through the other man’s eyes and grimaced. “No. I—no. I’m just here to handle the nightstalkers.”

“So what’s that got to do with whether you want a glass of water?” Richie was—no, he knew. That damn smile of his was twitching at the corners of his mouth. 

“You’re trying too hard,” Jon finally said. He took a step back, then over, aiming to put the bowl down on the sideboard.

It just about made it there, but with a rattle and a slosh because Richie followed him over, and made it clear he was going to follow Jon right up to the wall if Jon didn’t do something. Jon grabbed his arm and kept him off a few inches. He watched the surprise go over Richie’s face as the man tried and failed to push through it.

“I am here,” Jon said, slow and careful, “To kill things.”

“So I heard.” Richie finally settled for where he was, not fighting Jon but not slacking enough to make Jon think he wouldn’t try again. He chewed at his lip, frustrated, before abruptly blowing out his breath. “So you can’t do that every single minute, can you? You going out all night again?”

Jon blinked in surprise, then tightened his grip as he felt Richie’s arm move. “You’re here to work.”

It was not a fair blow. Richie went stiff and silent, angrier than when the rancher had first brought Jon up to him. His lips thinned till they almost disappeared. He lifted his head, as if to look away, and then abruptly snorted. His eyes cleared a little, still furious but thinking through it. “In case you hadn’t noticed, that bastard can make offers about us but that doesn’t mean we’re going to show up to the sale.”

“You…” Jon glanced past him, then dropped Richie’s arm. He slipped over and shut the door—no sign of anyone in the hall—then twisted around. Richie was still over by the sideboard. “Your friends probably want to kill you as much as he does.”

“No, he doesn’t want to kill us. That’s the end of the fun for him,” Richie said, drawling out the words. He went over to the bed and flopped down on his back. His feet lifted a few inches off the floor before thumping down. “Doesn’t much care what we do for fun either, so long as we turn a profit. And anyway, he’s back in town, and I hear you don’t have to tell him what _you_ do.”

He turned his head a little as Jon came up to the end of the bed, but didn’t quite look over. After a moment, Jon went back to the bowl of water. He took off his coat and then his neckcloth, and then leaned over to sluice water through his hair.

“He uses this room,” Richie added. He was staring at the ceiling when Jon looked at him. “I’m guessing that means he’s not coming for a while.”

“Still isn’t a good reason,” Jon muttered, wringing the used water onto the floor.

Richie raised his head, hopefully. “Are we just on reasons now?”

“Maybe I don’t like you,” Jon snapped, his temper giving out. He slung his damp hair over one shoulder so he could look at the other man. “You’re—”

“You like me,” Richie said, pulling himself up. There wasn’t a waver in him, from his eyes to his amused smile to the way he held his shoulders.

After another moment, Jon swallowed down his first reply. He turned back to the bowl, pulling his shirt open, and then ran a double handful of water around his neck, being sure to massage the top of his spine where all his irritation was beginning to knot. Then he pushed up his sleeves and washed his hands.

“I’ve got at least another two years, maybe three with this year’s losses,” Richie said. More quietly, the smugness gone. He shifted, his heels scratching the floor, and then the mattress creaked as he laid back down. “Got shipped out when I was twelve.”

“Here?” Jon said, startled. It wasn’t unheard of, but that young was rare this far out; most ranchers wanted someone they could throw onto a horse and set out, not a child they’d have to train and raise.

“No, back on the river, on a farm. Then the bank took it when I was sixteen, and traded me out here.” Richie talked as if it’d happened to someone else. “So why not? You’re not the one who’s got to stay and wait.”

Jon looked down into the bowl. Most of the water was gone and what was left was lukewarm, and swirling with dark flecks, probably from the kohl he’d rubbed from his eyes. He pushed it away and picked up his neckcloth to wipe off the extra water. “I should go out.”

“Are you going to find it just walking around in the dark?” Richie snorted. He moved a little when Jon turned, maybe thinking about getting away, but then just settled and watched Jon come up to the bed. “Did you find any last night?”

“You’re very irritating,” Jon finally said.

“No, I’m not.” Richie smiled at Jon, that pleased, knowing one, except it didn’t go to his eyes. Then he started up as Jon twisted around, rising just as Jon dropped down on his back beside him. His mouth opened a little and then stayed that way as he stared down at Jon.

“I should go out,” Jon said. “Not to find them. To let them know I’m around. They’re like dogs. Don’t like competition on their territory.”

Richie pulled his mouth shut, but kept staring at Jon. He was leaner than his coat made him look; the shoulders were broad enough but he wasn’t much wider than Jon at the waist. His shirt was loose enough in the front to show a couple scars across his collarbone, and when he absently pushed at one sleeve, he showed a few more on his forearm. “Well, so why don’t you?”

“I think I’m tired,” Jon admitted, more to himself than to the other man. He’d meant to shock the other man and then get back up, but now that he was on the bed, his damn body wanted to stay there. He had an ache in his right knee and another one just under his shoulders, and he just had had enough of following damn nightstalkers for a while. It might be his calling but sometimes he wished he didn’t hear it.

He stared at the face over his own for a moment without realizing what was happening. Then he jerked up his hand, cursing, and just got Richie by the neck. The other man dropped his elbow by Jon’s head to keep himself up, nose over Jon’s own, the apple of his throat sliding under Jon’s splayed thumb.

“What—” Then Jon let his head fall back. He stared at the far wall. “I actually am half one.”

“All right,” Richie said, and then he twisted his head to try and kiss Jon. He got his mouth just across Jon’s bottom lip before Jon pushed him up, and yes, the damn man was grinning. “Don’t think I mind, as long as you don’t turn into looking like that one you shot.”

“Maybe I do,” Jon said.

Richie paused, then shrugged. “I think I’ll wait and see for myself.”

Jon opened his mouth, but there was nothing to say. Nothing that was going to make the idiot he was still holding by the throat change his idiot mind, except possibly breaking his neck. And Jon was tempted to do that. People didn’t…make it that easy.

Richie moved. He could have been pulling away, or pushing down again, or just twitching. It didn’t matter. He came down when Jon pulled him down, mouth slack, some startled sound trying to get past the grip Jon had on his throat. Jon ignored it and pushed at his mouth till it came open, laid out for Jon, wherever Jon wanted to go and whatever he wanted to there, and then Richie started to respond. A short, sharp inhale and then he was dragging his fingers into Jon’s hair, pressing back, hungry noises rolling up against Jon’s thumb. When Jon pushed him off this time, he turned his head so his mouth ran up the inside of Jon’s wrist.

For a moment Jon didn’t need to breathe. Then he made himself exhale, and pushed himself back up against the footboard before Richie could crawl on him again. “I’m not. Half one.”

The other man looked up at him, still twisted at the waist, legs sprawling. Dark eyes, pupils smudged out of focus. Then Richie blinked. “All right.” He ran short of breath and coughed, then smiled up at Jon. “No worrying about your—”

“Is all you care about what I look like?” Jon said, exasperated.

“No, but I do like that a lot,” Richie answered. He shrugged, then let that run into an arch that got him half onto Jon’s right leg with one hand on Jon’s waist. “Knew you liked me.”

Jon was rubbing at his temple before he realized. Then he pushed off Richie’s hand and held it to the bed while he got his leg free. “I _am_ going out.”

“Fine.” Surprisingly, Richie moved back. He even helped Jon up off the bed, before getting to his own feet. “The foreman’s down the hall, but if we drop around the back wall first, I can have Alecia pass me a rifle through the window—”

“What?” Jon said.

Richie looked at him, some nerves finally showing. He pursed his lips a few times before he answered. “I want to see—I want to know how you do this. So I’m coming with you.”

For a while Jon considered it, while Richie watched. The other man never quite flinched, or dropped his gaze, but he wasn’t as comfortable as before. And that was not because he thought Jon was going to refuse, Jon eventually decided.

“You can borrow one of mine,” he told the man, turning away.

* * *

It settled down quick after the meal. The foreman was keeping away, but knowing that they were dealing with nightstalkers seemed to dampen people’s spirits anyway. People went about the evening chores with a little bit of a hurry in their step, and when the last lock was checked they all seemed satisfied with turning in.

Well, except for Richie, seeing as his bunk was empty, but David had been chasing that walking call for trouble for three days straight now. He had a good idea of where Richie had gone and it probably wasn’t going to make David dig out the little bit he’d learned when he’d worked in a doctor’s office for a few months, so Richie could look after himself for a few hours. 

“He after blondie again?” Alecia ducked her head into David’s bunk, then nodded across the aisle.

David shrugged, then put his hat over his face when Alecia raised her brows. “None of my business, girl.”

“Now you’re sounding like your heeler,” Alecia said. The bed dipped under her weight, and then she pushed David’s legs over to make more room. When he hit at her, she knocked off his hat. “Speaking of, swap you the big one tonight for a box of powder.”

“What am I supposed to do with that? Dust my face while we rope your share again?” David wondered. He twisted away from her blow, then remembered his hat and dug it out from behind him before he crushed it. Then he pulled himself up against the back wall, looking narrowly at her. “The hell you need the big bunk for, anyway? You’re the only one who used a bed last night.”

Alecia sneered at him. “Because you never can stay off that broken-down piano they have in there. Thing sounds like somebody ought to take it out and shoot it.”

“Always sounds good enough to me,” Tico said, coming up. He stopped just short of Alecia, and while she was turning to look at him, stuck out his foot and hooked it around the back of her calf. Her reflexes were good enough to keep him from dumping her ass-down in the dirt, but it gave him the room to reach in and then haul out David, too. “Better than that organ in church.”

“When did you ever _go_ to church?” Alecia snorted. She’d been reaching to whack Tico again, but he’d pulled David in the way and instead she had to settle for glowering at them. “It’s not fair. I was riding circuit before this and haven’t had a turn this whole month.”

“It’s fair. House rules, you’re the one who gets Richie to bed with his head still on, you get it,” David retorted. “You wanted it, should’ve stopped after that redhead.”

“That what?” Mary had come in at some point. Her arms were crossed tight over her chest and for a moment David was worried. But then he came to her eyes and they were just a little too soft to be angry.

Tico seemed to agree, pulling David along before he could say anything else. The last bed in the line was twice as wide as the rest. It’d been a double at some point, like all the other bunks, but someone had sawed off the top one and left the posts to stand up like soldiers at the corners. Nobody had it regularly; sick ones got it if the doctor thought it wasn’t so bad as to just run them out and wait, and the foreman sometimes used it, when he was checking to see that they weren’t fomenting rebellion.

Not that any of them could. If you got tired enough and hopeless enough, maybe you’d just up and go at him to get out through the graveyard, but that was about all you could do to hurry it up. Sometimes the new ones talked wild about stealing a horse and hiding in the canyons, but then they sent bounty hunters. If you were caught, the bounty was added onto your debt, and even if you weren’t, your debt was doubled. That was often enough to force your family to bond out another child. 

“Now you’re thinking.” Tico let go of David and sat down on the bed. He leaned over and ruffled up the sheets, in case anything unpleasant needed to be shaken out, and then pulled up his heads and let his head go down. He braced his right foot against the nearest bedpost with his left, then began to pull off his boot.

David shrugged his apology. He stepped out of his boots and crawled onto the bed, using Tico’s leg to steady himself. When Tico dropped the limb, switching to the other boot, David let it pull him onto the other man. Maybe a little too carelessly; his hand jarred loose, skidded over Tico’s thigh and then ended up with its knuckles pushed into the crease where leg met torso. 

He stopped his fall just short of landing his chin on Tico’s shoulder. Heard the other man breathing above him, heard it change its pace, and felt his mouth curling. It wasn’t all bad.

Tico put his hand on David’s waist, flat and then knotting up in the slack of David’s shirt. David was already pushing his head into the side of the other man’s neck, working his knuckles over the line of Tico’s cock. He mouthed at the underline of Tico’s jaw, bit down by accident when Tico got him by the hips and pushed him down so his hand went numb between them. Then bit on purpose when Tico wouldn’t let him back up, even though it was already good and hot, down below David’s belly, down under his breath that was coming short. 

Because it was that, he managed to remember. He was not—he squirmed free, got his hand moving enough to fumble open his belt. Then meant to move on but Tico was already there, shucking the leather off his hips as easy as peeling corn. David gasped and grabbed at Tico’s side, then dragged his hands up and clutched them in Tico’s hair. His left hand slipped and Tico had it in his mouth in an instant, teeth just holding the webbing between David’s forefinger and thumb. The other man wasn’t much for kissing on the mouth but he’d spend forever on David’s hands if anyone let him. Licking and sucking, letting David’s nails click against his teeth, watching David go to hell with half-lidded eyes.

Back at the other end Alecia and Mary must have made up, because David could hear Mary’s laugh ringing out like a bell. Couple others had joined them, shuffling paper, starting a card game. And broad blunt fingers closed around his prick, dragging him away from that, down into the creaking bed, onto Tico’s shoulder as he twisted and pressed and finally arched back.

His feet wouldn’t go all the way down, he half-noticed, and then something clattered by them on the floor. “Don’t break the damn thing again,” Alecia called.

“You’ll get your damn turn,” Tico told her, still stroking David down. He shifted his shoulder so David could slide off him onto the side, get his feet untangled from that post that’d managed to get itself in the way. Then he noticed David’s hand was still splayed across his cheek and bit the pad of David’s middle finger.

David snorted and carded his hand back into the other man’s hair. His body wasn’t quite following him yet, acting like its limbs had all been soaked in molasses, but he managed to fold his knee out of the way as Tico reached down, still nibbling at David’s wrist, and pulled out his own cock. “Wait,” David muttered, but Tico was already more than halfway there by the time he got his hand down to help the other man. “Oh—”

Tico rolled onto him, pinning him half on the bed, half against the wall, breath coming in burning waves over David’s shoulder. Mouth wrapped around David’s wrist like he meant to pull out the pulse, his hand moving too urgently for David, fingers scraping over David’s slow ones, and David was near to losing his breath again when the other man came.

Always quiet and quick, and then a kiss for David’s temple or palm, whatever was nearest, and a long lazy run of his hand down David’s side. He caught David’s hand when David made to go for a cloth to clean up and pushed it back. Then he went pulling at David’s shirt again. It took a moment for David to realize what he was getting at.

“Was really better than I thought it’d go,” David said. He allowed one poke at his bruised side, then nudged Tico’s hand off. “Maybe Jon said something to him. Kept walking in before the bastard could really get going.”

“So maybe Richie should make friends with him,” Tico said. Then laughed at David, turning away. He pulled off the cloth from around his neck and began rubbing off his hand. “I thought you liked watching Richie.”

“I…” David started, irritated. He saw how Tico was looking at him—waiting for him—and just rolled his eyes, dropping his head on the other man’s shoulder again. When Tico moved on to wiping him down, shifted his hips and knees for a better angle. “When he’s done making me think he’s going to get us all killed. Not sure he’s there yet.”

Tico hummed under his breath. He finished with David and stretched back his arm to toss the soiled rag into the bucket hanging on the wall, then dropped that arm behind his head. “How old do you think he is?”

“Not old enough to go out by himself.”

“No, I meant the hunter,” Tico said, snorting. He tilted his head. “I thought they didn’t license them till twenty-one, usually.”

David shrugged. He hadn’t heard of that, but Tico had actually spent some time in the capital and probably knew what he was talking about. “He knows what he’s doing, from what I’ve seen so far, no matter how old he is.”

“He really stood up to the bastard?”

“He didn’t—exactly…well, he didn’t slap the man in the face. But he tells him what he wants to do, and the bastard does listen,” David said after a moment.

Tico looked at him. “You like him?”

For a couple moments David just looked back. Something he liked about the other man, how Tico would let him do that, instead of nagging for a damn answer. Of course Tico was the oldest around, after the foreman, and maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe not, since Alec had nagged too, right up to the end.

‘Thinking again,’ said Tico’s quirked brows and not his mouth.

“He’s got a nice face,” David said blandly. He stretched his shoulders against the wall, saw Tico’s eyes wander down over the bare skin where his shirt had flopped open, then further where the shirt-tails ran out and David’s pants were still unlaced. “All right, he’d look good on Richie’s lap. Really…his hair’s lighter than mine under the sun, and that gold up against Richie, and pull off the coat and hat and just leave him in his buckskins, and—”

Tico looked at him again and David felt the words melting in his mouth. He wanted to say that the man had asked, after all, but he wanted to ask himself, except his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. Hopefully Tico could just _see_ that.

The click of a hammer had them both moving. David’s fingers were brushing a boot when the shotgun barked. He grabbed it and tossed it back over his shoulder at the other man, then scrambled to get out of the bed.

* * *

“I wasn’t watching you,” Richie said, pulling himself onto the rail. He paused there, one knee up to his chest while the other leg hanging down the fence, and then dropped down onto the other side. “I just came by your room in the morning, and it didn’t look like you’d slept.”

“I don’t remember that.” Jon turned around so he was facing the main house. This far back, he could take in the whole building, with the wing off to the side for the kitchen and then the line of windows that marked out the bunk-house. The stables were another building off to the right, with a good fifty feet in between.

Richie wandered up to Jon and then behind him, swinging the carbine Jon had lent him from one hand like a girl would a doll. “Well, you weren’t there. Your bed was.”

Jon glanced at him, then stifled a sigh and hiked his rifle over one shoulder. He was already regretting his decision not to tell the other man to just leave, but it couldn’t be undone now. Best to just set the lures and get it over with. “So where’s your well?”

“Oh, about another twenty yards this way. Just after the crest there,” Richie said, pointing with the carbine. He waited for Jon to come up level for him, then reached for the covered bucket in Jon’s hand. “You could’ve at least pulled back the sheets.”

“I wasn’t thinking that anyone but the hotel help would care, and I thought they might appreciate less work,” Jon muttered. He switched the bucket and rifle so that Richie would have to reach across him for the former. “You see any cattle?”

After a moment, the other man twisted around. He kept walking right by Jon, turning as he went and scanning the fields around them with exaggerated concentration. When he took that last step to put him facing forward again, his leg slid so that he was nearly shoulder to shoulder with Jon. “No. So you don’t sleep at all?”

“No, I do, and I’m planning on getting a good night’s rest after this is seen to.” They came to the top of the rise and Jon could see the well at the hillock’s base. He’d wondered why there wasn’t a windmill to mark the spot, but now he could see the iron struts marking out where one had once stood—or maybe was going to stand soon. At the moment someone had rigged up a pulley to serve, but a pile of iron bars off to the side said it was only temporary. “That from the big windstorm a few weeks back?”

Richie nodded. It was a clear night, but the moon was waning and there wasn’t enough light to read the other man’s face. Still, it seemed like he was staring at Jon too long to be amused. “What are we doing?”

“If we just ride out and try to herd all the cows out there, it’d take too long. By the time we got them all, the nightstalkers would know we’re looking and would’ve run out of here,” Jon said. He stepped back from the rise, heading away from the well and the house. The bucket bumped into his leg and he bit back a curse, then checked that he hadn’t jarred off the cover. He caught Richie looking at it and swung it away from the other man. “No offense. It’s just I don’t like people handling this who don’t know what it is.”

“So what is it?” A trace of irritation wove its way into Richie’s voice, but he held back as Jon set down the bucket and then used the end of the rifle to carefully flip off the lid.

“Something to get them to come this way.” Jon could sense the next question and couldn’t help a laugh. “No, no. I wouldn’t do it if I thought any of them were that close. Far as I can tell, nearest can’t get here before tomorrow night. By then we’ll have people set up around the house and it’s just a matter of shooting them as they come up.”

Richie nodded again, idly twisting the carbine in his hand. “Not really answering my question, are you?”

“Didn’t I?” Jon said, backing up. He went half a step past the other man before he realized Richie had picked now to stop following him. With a sigh, he came back and reached for Richie’s arm. “Look, it’ll flare up, so you need to get back.”

“Smells like gunpowder.” For a moment Richie resisted. Then he let Jon pull him back several paces. “What, another trade secret?”

Jon had been lifting the rifle, but after a moment, he lowered it and looked at the other man. “No, not really. That recipe’s in a pamphlet you can get free from the governor’s office.”

“Well, I’m not going to see the governor any time soon,” Richie muttered. He hooked his free hand around the back of his neck, then pulled at his hair till he had it in a tail behind him, staring at the bucket. Then he dropped the tail and pushed at his hat. “Why do you think you’re so terrifying, anyway?”

This time Jon got the rifle up level with his shoulder. He hesitated, pulled the trigger back nearly there, hesitated again, and then released the trigger and put down the gun again. It was a shot a child couldn’t miss, not at this range, but he knew he’d sky wide right now. He was supposed to be _good_ at this, he thought, and then was a little startled at the viciousness of his thoughts.

“Sorry,” Richie suddenly offered.

Jon turned and there was a hand on his jaw, thumb under it, and he was being kissed hard and good. He twisted, his teeth caught on something soft and hot, and Richie moaned. And for a moment he wanted to stay there and sink in, do it on purpose, but—Richie jerked, then lifted his head. They were close enough now for Jon to see the glint in the man’s eyes, daring him, despite the dark.

“No, I’m not,” Richie said. He looked a moment longer at Jon, then glanced down where Jon had instinctively jammed his rifle into the other man’s belly. His mouth twitched. Something clinked softly and Jon realized that Richie was tapping the rifle barrel with the carbine. “You really that angry with me?”

“I.” Then Jon shut his mouth. He swung the rifle away and took a few steps to the left, and thankfully, Richie stayed where he was. Jon hefted the rifle for the third time, took a deep breath and let it out, and made himself think about what had gone into the bucket. The ingredients, one by one, till he thought his head was clear enough.

The wind changed on him. He began to lower the rifle, then shook his head. He was not—he was not stopping because he was distracted, he suddenly realized. At least, not because of the other man.

Jon turned on his heel and stared at the house again. The lines of it looked the same as before: main house, bunkhouse, stable separate. He put his hand to the side of his face and pressed the heel into his temple, trying to figure out what was wrong. The grass beside him rustled as Richie came up and Jon grimaced, then silently prayed that the man would just shut up. The last thing he needed right now was Richie—

Richie hissed and swung up the carbine. Jon swept his eyes down the barrel and saw the shadow crouched over one of the bunkhouse windows a second before Richie fired. The nightstalker jerked oddly—someone had shot it from the inside too, Jon thought distantly. He was already running forward to leap the fence.

He knew neither shot had killed it and he could hear Richie yelling at him, likely because he was blocking any second shot. On purpose, because he didn’t have time to tell the other man where to aim. The nightstalker had already recovered enough to scrabble at the edge of the roof.

At least one of the shots had gone into an arm, judging by how the stalker was crawling. That slowed it some, so that it had just clambered over the eave and onto the roof by the time Jon pulled up at the wall. Jon jumped, got the toes of one foot onto the windowsill—nearly kicked in someone’s face, the shutter was open now—and managed to pull himself up without losing his rifle.

The nightstalker had gotten nearly to the peak of the roof, but it stopped there, twisting back to face Jon. It was old enough for the eyes to have rotted out, but in their place was a dull, unnerving red glow. The thing stared at him, crouched against the slats, black fluid staining its front. He had one foot braced on the edge of a slat but his other was off the roof, and his rifle was down flat on the slats as well. If he picked it up, he was going to lose his balance. If he tried to brace himself better, the stalker would have time to leap.

It swayed in the wind, opening its mouth. Then—it sprang forward. Jon snatched up his rifle and shot, and then they were both falling.

The bullet went clean through the stalker’s head and its body was slack before it even tumbled off the roof. By then Jon had dropped below the eave and he was going to break something, he thought.

Except he jerked short by a good few feet. The breath jarred hard out of him and for a moment he didn’t know if it would come back. Just beyond the limp corpse of the nightstalker kept on to the ground, and at the sound of its landing Jon inhaled sharply. He moved without thinking, found his limbs were working, and then just stopped himself from swinging his rifle too far back.

“Thanks,” Richie said. When Jon glanced back, the other man was staring at the rifle butt that had nearly cracked his jaw. Then his eyes flicked up to Jon and he grinned, his arms shifting behind Jon’s back and under Jon’s legs. “Good shot, too.”

“That fucking thing was picking out the hinge!” Alecia stared wildly back at them from the other side of the window. Then she grabbed the sill and lifted the shotgun in her hand as if she was going to climb out to them. “What—where did—”

“What the hell is going on?” roared the foreman’s voice.

The grin dropped off Richie’s face and he set Jon down right away. Jon was already reaching for the window, pushing Alecia out of the way so the foreman could see him. “It’s dead. It’s dead, and I need to talk to you.”

* * *

“I thought you’re supposed to know what you’re doing,” the foreman said stubbornly.

He’d started off by trying to take Alecia to task for swinging around with the shotgun, since she’d ended up pointing it at him for about a second and sometimes that could be enough to send a whole family into bond as retribution. Then he’d moved on to talking about how Jon had told them to lock up and not post a lookout. Now he was just embarrassed, David thought, and while it was entertaining in its way, David was watching the tic in the foreman’s cheek and wishing they’d taken this outside. Away from the rest of them, at least.

“I do,” Jon said icily. He hadn’t raised his voice once; in fact, he’d slowly dropped it so now he was speaking in little more than a whisper. The look in his eyes made sure everyone else stayed quiet enough to hear that fine. “And you told me I saw everyone who’s on this ranch at dinner.”

“Well, you did.” The foreman planted his feet and crossed his arms, the doorway behind him looking two sizes too small for his bulk.

Jon’s brow arched. Nothing else about him moved, and his hands on the table were even loose, fingers slightly curled instead of pressed flat. He still looked like something too fine for the room, with its rough knotty timbers, but you remembered that some things wrapped in paper could have sharp edges when you looked at him now. “Then where did it come from?”

“Well—the town. Could’ve come from the town,” the foreman said. His eyes flicked sideways, then went back to Jon.

“It didn’t come from there. _I_ came from there and I know I didn’t leave any in it when I left,” Jon snapped. He stared at the foreman for another moment, then suddenly pushed himself back into a nearby chair, twisting so he was sitting at right angles to the foreman and facing the rest of them. He frowned. “Richie?”

Richie had tucked himself in by David, watching with what looked like genuine sobriety. Not even a hint of inappropriate mocking in his eyes, and when Jon said his name, he started so badly he had to push himself off the wall to stay up.

“Did you say three of the steers were out on the part you rode?” Jon asked.

The foreman was staring at Richie now, confused but madder than a gored bull. And Richie did see it, even met that gaze for a second, and the tense knot in David’s belly began to chill when he saw Richie just tighten his jaw. Then Richie looked at Jon, who was still waiting for an answer. He nodded.

“All right.” Jon began to pull himself up onto his feet. “Well, then you and I—” he was speaking to the foreman now “—we’ll go around now to see that that’s the only one here, and to get something I left outside. And then tomorrow Richie can take us out to his circuit, and we’ll see if something’s there that’ll explain this.”

“I can’t leave,” the foreman said. “Boss said he’d be coming and somebody’s got to greet him.”

“I’ll write a note you can leave for him,” Jon said. His eyes passed over the foreman and the man’s color drained a little, then kept going as he came around the table. “Come on. By the time we’re back, that shutter will be fixed, and then we can all get the sleep we’ll need for tomorrow.”

He walked straight at the foreman, who opened and shut his mouth a few times. Then the son of a bitch realized Jon wasn’t going to _stop_ and moved aside, and as Jon passed him, all that color came back in an angry flush. The foreman stared after Jon’s retreating back, then looked at them. Then he jerked himself after Jon, muttering a curse under his breath. Their footsteps gradually faded away.

“Well, got to fix that window,” Tico said. He cracked a few knuckles, then wandered off, saying he’d get the tools.

Surprisingly, Alecia went with him, and it was Mary who stayed and stared at Richie with David. “You out with him?” Mary finally said.

Richie shrugged. “Said he didn’t mind.”

She looked at him. Then she shrugged back and turned away. “You’re old enough. You know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t think so,” David muttered. He heard Richie’s half-stifled exclamation, but ignored it as he followed in Mary’s footsteps.

She got out the door, but Richie got his arm before he made it to the hall. “You don’t like him?” Richie asked. Disappointed, of all things.

“That’s not the point, you—” Out of words, David let out an exasperated sigh. He fell back against the wall, pushing at the side of his face. Then he reached out and pulled the door shut. “Something’s not right here, and you’re too busy looking at his damn ass to bother about it. All right, I don’t expect much politicking from you, but you could at least look around.”

“You two should get along fine. He’s saying the same thing.” Richie did not smile as he spoke, and his voice was flat and bitter. Then he ducked his head. He kept down for a second before he took a deep, slow breath, his chin rising till he was staring up at the ceiling. Finally he looked back at David, and David had to blink hard to see that the weary, resigned man in front of him really was his friend. “That son of a bitch is going to take me one way or the other, David. Because I didn’t bend my neck, and even if I started now, he’s not going to forget I didn’t before. I might as well choose how he’s going to do it.”

“But that’s not right,” David said without thinking. He put out his hand, then stopped himself before he grabbed Richie. Not because he’d lost the desire to just _shake_ some sense into the man, because it was there all right—always there, and right now so much so that he almost wanted to cry. But his eyes stayed dry, because he knew the man was telling the truth. “Well, I don’t _want_ you to.”

Richie smiled for him now. He ruffled David’s hair and he laughed because he knew David was making a fist to keep himself from slapping the damn fool. “You do like Jon, right?”

“Seeing as you’ve kept him too busy to talk to anyone else, I suppose I do,” David said after a long moment. He still sounded raw, but they both ignored that. “Look, just…not this time. It doesn’t have to be this time. You’re not in a fucking hurry, are you?”

“Ah, Dave,” Richie said, shaking his head. He draped his arm around David’s shoulders and tugged, and eventually David let the man pull him off the wall. “You know, I thought you might be happy. Least it’s not going to be Alecia.”

“Never was that worried about you two. You like whoring together, that’s all, and Mary’s going to get that out of her someday,” David muttered. The end of Richie’s coat flapped between David’s legs and he reached back to pull it away. Then, after a moment’s thought, he brought up his arm to hook over Richie’s neck.

He dug it down too hard and he could feel the muscles tensing under his arm, but Richie didn’t say anything or push him off. If he had, David would’ve had a decent reason to hit the man, but Richie always picked the damnedest times to show some sense. Damn him, David thought irritably. And then again, more bleakly, before he made himself push that away. They still had tonight to get through.

* * *

The three dead cattle Richie had found had all been within a few miles of each other, in an area a few hours’ ride away. From what Richie said, the place wasn’t anything remarkable. There was a sandstone outcropping they were going to aim for, but he told Jon it wasn’t more than a couple of boulders stacked together and a little creek. Nowhere for a nest of stalkers to hide during the daytime, and it wouldn’t attract enough wildlife to keep one going either. It didn’t add up.

But then, neither had the foreman’s reaction when Jon had brought it up. And it was strange that the rancher would bother to meet Jon personally, but wouldn’t come out to the ranch with him. Tax assessors could be a right pain, but clearing out nightstalkers should take precedence over anything. They knew that. At the time Jon hadn’t cared too much, given his dislike of the rancher, but he was thinking it over again.

After a brief, uncomfortable conversation in the morning, the foreman had left Jon to that. He kept lagging behind Jon and Richie and his face reddened every time Jon slowed up so they were level again, but he didn’t say a word.

Richie didn’t either, save for the occasional muttered direction. He was still looking at Jon like he had some stupid idea to drag them into, but that, Jon was beginning to learn how to ignore. Anyway, Richie had the foreman to watch as well, though he clearly didn’t enjoy that as much. Jon idly wondered whether it was just Richie—who probably could rub a saint the wrong way if he took it into his head—or if it dated to a concrete incident between the two.

“We’re just about there,” Richie said, pulling up his horse. He waited for Jon and the foreman to catch up, then pointed out a reddish spot on the horizon. “That’s it.”

Jon nodded, then turned back and forth, surveying their surroundings. A sea of grass surrounded them on either side, with just that red dot to break the monotony. He squinted against the sun, wishing he’d laid on the kohl a little heavier around his eyes this morning, then straightened up as something rippled over the grass to the left. Then he snorted to himself and looked up at the cloud casting that shadow.

“I think we pick it up a little, we’ll make it before that storm rolls in,” Richie said, looking at the same thing. He glanced back at the foreman, who deliberately turned and regarded Jon with an expectation that bordered on contemptuous.

It could just be injured pride, Jon thought. So far it’d all been stupid petty things, and Jon certainly hadn’t seen any signs of a good mind in the foreman. “So let’s do that.”

Richie’s mouth curved a little, then went flat as the foreman shifted in the saddle, grunting. He bowed his head so the brim of his hat hid his face and kneed his horse forward.

Storms could blow up quick in this area. The sky could be spotless blue and then in almost the blink of an eye, black thunderheads would be crowding it shoulder to shoulder. This one gave them a bit longer, but it was still a close call to get up to the rock before the rain came down.

The rock itself was unimpressive. Not even as big as the ranch-house, and about as tall as two horses. They gathered in its lee side, between it and the sluggish brown thread Richie informed Jon was the tail-end of the creek. The rock didn’t have much of an overhang and their horses were going to have to stand out and suffer the rain, but it would be enough to keep their guns dry, Jon calculated.

He dismounted and pulled his rifle and pack off the saddle, then pushed those up against the rock. Then he turned back to get his horse hobbled, only to find Richie down on his knees already taking care of it. Richie’s own horse was already hobbled and grunting its discontent as it flicked its tail back and forth, futilely trying to sweep the wet off its haunches, while the foreman was tending to his horse a couple yards away.

“So how far from here?” Jon asked.

Richie finished tying the last knot, then sat back to rest his arms on his knees. He looked up at Jon; his back was far enough into the rain that water was running off his hat-brim and down his coat, and his hair was clumped halfway to a dripping rat-tail. At some point he must have taken a gust of wind in the face because black smears were trailing over his cheeks. He blinked hard, then stood up, rubbing at his eyes. 

Jon took him by the arm before the man could walk blind into him, then handed him a rag to wipe off the kohl. “I meant the—”

“So one was about half a mile west, and the other two were northeast and a little farther,” Richie said. He screwed up his right eye, scrubbing at the inside corner, and peered at Jon with the other. “You ever talk about anything besides your business?”

“You ever talk about anything besides what you want?” Jon replied, his irritation bettering him.

Richie lowered the rag and blinked slowly. He started to raise the rag again, stopped, blinked again, and then tossed the rag back to Jon. “Well, you haven’t really been asking.”

After a moment, Jon stepped back. He dropped the rag on top of his bag and then went around Richie to look out across the plain. A stone rattled against the back of his boot and he looked down, then grimaced as the wind shifted suddenly, lashing rain across his face. He put his foot back and Richie grabbed his elbow as Jon slipped off the top of Richie’s boot.

“Would you want to talk about it?” Jon said quietly. He looked over at the foreman, who was standing with his back to them. The wind wasn’t blowing towards the man. 

“What? How much I like things I can shoot?” Richie looked over there as well, the corners of his mouth pulling tightly back. Then he smiled more warmly at Jon. “We could talk about my gun collection.”

Jon stared at him. Then shook his head. Water ran down the side of his face and he wiped at it with his sleeve. “I’m surprised you get to keep so many.”

“Well, can’t make trouble with them unless I want to get everybody hanged, and I like everyone besides them,” Richie said with a shrug. He still had a faint smear of kohl across the bone of his left cheek. “And I think they like laughing at me, spending the little bit they give us instead of sending it towards the debt on my back.”

“And you don’t mind that?” Jon asked.

Richie was silent for a moment. He pursed his lips and then looked down, where his right hand was fiddling with the leather gauntlet strapped around his left wrist. “They give that to you because they want to make you think you can earn your way out of this,” he finally said. “I know better.”

“Does anyone…” Then Jon grimaced, wishing they had started talking about Richie’s damn gun collection.

“There’s one I know of. Alec, but he has family in the government. I don’t really know what happened—David does—but I think his father was on the outs with those relations for a while. Then they weren’t, and Alec went home,” Richie told him, still fiddling with his wrist. “Other than that, no.”

Jon grimaced again. He wanted to apologize but something about the set of Richie’s shoulders let him know that that would just make it worse. The man hadn’t asked for Jon’s pity yet, and he had shown enough for Jon to respect that. “I’ve never been long on a bonds—anywhere, really. My family came out on a wagon train when I was thirteen.”

Richie looked up and over, abandoning the gauntlet. He pulled off his hat, tucked it under one arm, and began squeezing the water from his hair. “So everything was small farms where you were?”

“No. The train never got that far,” Jon said. “We ran into a nest of nightstalkers one night. We’d just passed an army fort and were headed towards the next, and when we didn’t show, they sent out a detail. Got there about a week later and found just me.” He watched Richie want to say something and then fight that down. “It’s like a disease. Usually kills you, but once in a while, somebody survives. But you’re different afterward.”

“Turn ugly at night?” Richie said after a moment, more tentative than Jon had heard him yet.

Jon snorted and Richie’s shoulders relaxed. “No, I don’t,” Jon replied. “But I usually have a good idea of whether one’s around. I can’t—tell where, exactly, but I know. And I don’t need to sleep too much.”

“Thanks.” Then Richie grinned. “Answering that question, finally. Just a thousand more of mine to go.”

“You’re…” Shaking his head, Jon had a wet strip of hair flick into his eyes. He peeled it off.

“The greatest man you’ve ever met?” Richie said hopefully.

Jon sighed, and Richie opened his mouth to say some other ridiculous thing. Then stilled, his lips still parted, as Jon reached up and just wiped that track off his cheek. It’d been nagging at Jon, but even with Richie’s cheek clean, that tug was still in the back of Jon’s head, making him look at the other man. Who was still staring at him, like _Jon_ was the greatest thing he’d ever seen, and where he’d gotten that idea, Jon couldn’t even begin to guess.

“I wish I knew why I couldn’t feel those two until they were that close,” Jon muttered, looking away. “Should’ve had more warning.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Richie asked. He didn’t sound too offended at going back to business; if anything, he sounded as if Jon had just told him that he was, in fact, the greatest.

“Oh, since sixteen, so…” Jon had to think about what his last birthday had been “…going on four years.”

Richie kicked a rock out into the rain. “So you’ve got to be good by now.”

“I’m the best they’ve got,” Jon said absently, still searching his memory for what he’d missed. Even accounting for his being distracted by Richie, he still should have noticed something. He’d spent too long working to _not_ react when he felt one around. “…just sounded like a stray passing through, shouldn’t be this complicated…”

“So that bastard really is serious,” Richie muttered. “He never spends that kind of money, and he must’ve tossed down a couple bags to get you out here.”

At that Jon looked over for the foreman, only to find that the other man was gone. He stiffened, but then noticed that the man’s horse was still where it was, and that muddy footprints were leading off around the corner of the rock. Taking a piss or something like that, maybe. Still, Jon backed up and got his rifle, and then nodded when Richie pointed inquiringly to the revolver at his hip.

“But don’t take it as an excuse,” Jon said.

“Good to know you care.” Richie tossed it off as another joke, already pulling himself up to squint out into the rain.

Jon stopped where he was, like an idiot, and a sudden rush of wind blew at them. He stumbled back and had to slap his hand against the rock to steady himself.

It sounded—Richie looked back, frowning, and watched Jon pull his hand off the rock. After a moment’s thought, Jon raised his rifle and then hit the butt against the outcrop. He heard the same hollow sound, and on top of that, the blow had left a large brown crack and a couple red chips. Jon picked one up, turned it back and forth, and then broke it in half over his thumbnail. “Paint,” he muttered.

He looked at Richie, whose confused expression answered any questions Jon had about the man. Then he turned back to the crack and paused. It looked bigger and darker than he remembered, and he’d just been facing it a few seconds—

Jon whipped his head up, then cursed and lunged for Richie, dragging the other man back against the outcrop as the nightstalker leaped down at them. He was wrestling his rifle around when his ears suddenly rang and the stalker shuddered backwards, then dropped. Richie kept his revolver aimed at the twitching corpse.

“Where is he?” Jon hissed at Richie.

“I’ll—” Richie looked back behind Jon and his eyes widened.

Something slashed Jon’s arm, then hauled him back off his feet before the pain even registered. His rifle banged off his knee and then skittered away as his back slammed into the rock. Then a gun cracked and something burned past Jon’s shoulder, sending a burst of splinters the other way. He jerked his head away, closing his eyes to keep from being blinded, and then lost his balance as the grip on his arm abruptly disappeared.

Jon broke his fall with his hands, then twisted over onto his side as white lightning raced up his arm and knocked out his shoulder. He grabbed his elbow, his vision fading in and out with the pain. Warm stuff running over his shoulder and onto his neck. Richie’s wide eyes. A hand splayed towards him and then blood all over Richie’s face. And then the hand was gone and somewhere a horse was screaming, shrill and breaking, dying, and a grey, withered thing with yellowed, cracked nails was crawling towards him, its mouth full of white, long teeth.

And then he didn’t see anything.

* * *

The boss showed up about an hour before the midday meal, about when they’d all stopped keeping half an eye out for the foreman’s early return. He took the note—which, true to his word, Jon had dictated for the foreman to painfully scrawl out—Mary handed to him and read it with no change in expression. Then he’d gone into the kitchen for his meal, which gave David and Alecia just about enough time to clear out the few items Jon had left in the boss’ room and to give the place something of a going-over.

After that Alecia had left David to go circle Mary and the boss in the kitchen. David had wasted a good amount of time trying to think of a hiding place before he’d given up and just carried Jon’s things out to the stall where they’d stabled Jon’s horse the night before. Jon had told them he planned to come back before nightfall, and it might take that long before the boss got around to asking. It’d been a good three months since the bastard’s last visit and he always wanted a thorough accounting up front when he came.

True to form, he headed from the kitchen into his room with the ranch’s books. He’d been in there a good hour when David got tired of staring at the closed door and went outside. Tico and one of the other hands had been busy getting enough fuel together to burn the nightstalker’s body—plenty of long dry grass around, but hard to dig up the wood that’d make a fire last longer than a flash in the wind—and were just lighting the pyre when David arrived at the spot.

The smell was not as bad as David would’ve expected. But then, the thing had shriveled up remarkably in the sun, to the point that its skin was already flaking when they threw it Everything inside had just disappeared, leaving behind some paper on bones. “Ugly, whoever they were,” he muttered. He nodded at the other hand. “I’ll watch for sparks. Go on ahead.”

That man left, but Tico just settled himself next to the pair of water-buckets you always had to keep around, unless you wanted the whole plain afire. “You think so?”

David frowned at him, then went off a few paces as a swirl of sparks flew up. He scuffed some dust over one speck of orange that glowed too long, then came back to the other man. “Doesn’t say much for me if that’s what you’re liking now.”

“Stop fishing for compliments, Richie,” Tico drawled. But then he turned back to the fire, staring too hard into it. He even pulled himself to his feet and went close enough for David to see his face tightening from the heat. “I just think—it looked familiar, didn’t it?”

“That? Who _are_ you seeing these days?” David snorted.

“No, it did. But I can’t—” Tico grimaced and finally stepped back, so David could stop watching his coat flap too near the flames “—I can’t remember.”

Tico wasn’t the one who’d been on the ranch the longest, but he got into less trouble than the rest of them and was trusted to go to town more often. Maybe he had seen them there, David thought, and then David recalled what Jon had said about none being left in town. Then maybe it was some drifter who’d gotten unlucky—but then Tico wouldn’t think he knew whoever it had used to be.

Somebody from before Tico had gotten here, then. He’d never said so much in so many words, but he’d been a good bit older than the rest of them when he’d been bonded out. And David had the sense that it hadn’t just had to do with a financial debt, but he’d never pressed the man on it. They had it hard enough without thinking about what had gone wrong before.

He wanted to think of something else they could talk about, but nothing came to mind. So he just kept the man company as they watched the fire burn down.

“Going to bother me, placing it,” Tico finally muttered, picking up the buckets. He carefully doused the last few embers, then turned around, pushing at the side of his face. Then he stiffened.

David looked where he was looking, and saw two riders coming back from the direction that Jon and Richie and the foreman had headed out. He looked at Tico and the man’s grim face said enough, before Tico even tossed the buckets aside and went down to the house.

Still, it was another couple of minutes before David could make out any more details and he was hoping…he made his way around to the front of the house and shaded his eyes, squinting till even he had to admit that it was the foreman’s chestnut and Richie’s splashy paint coming in. And—and Richie wasn’t handling his own reins. David could just make out a faint dark line going from the paint’s head to the foreman.

“Shit.” Alecia had come up behind David. She put her hand on his shoulder as he started, pushing down so hard that he almost swore at her. Then she jerked her head at behind her.

The boss came out onto the porch. His eyes picked out the pair, blazed up and then went cold in a way that made David bite blood out of his lip. 

Nobody wanted to even breathe too loud in front of that, so they all stood around like fenceposts while the two horses came closer and closer. Richie was sitting badly in the saddle. Pulling himself around and jerking his head, and his hands weren’t coming up and goddamn it, David thought. The man was goddamn tied to the saddle, that was why. No hat, and when they came close enough for David to see the bloody hair matted over Richie’s left temple and the cloth stuffed into his mouth, he almost had expected it.

The foreman pulled them up in front of the porch. He took off his hat and nodded at the boss. “Sorry I missed you, sir.”

“What is this?” the boss said sharply.

Richie was shaking his head, eyes dazed, as if he hadn’t been awake too long. He made a ragged sound and the foreman jerked his rifle from where it’d been lying across the saddle, as if he meant to crack Richie in the head with the butt. Then he put it down, looking at the boss. His smile was too tight. “He went off at the hunter,” the foreman said. “We were out—”

“I had your note.” The boss’ voice was hard and cold and pulled the foreman up. He had to gesture for the foreman to continue.

“—anyway, he just—shot him. And I hit him, tried to stop him, but it was too late,” the foreman finally said. “Man’s dead.”

Richie went still, his head twisted around so he was looking at the foreman, and whatever he looked like, it had the son of a bitch lifting his rifle before Richie even tried for him. And then Richie’s head was hanging over the side of his horse, fresh blood dripping through his hair, and Alecia dug her fingers into David’s shoulder like she meant to pry out the bone. He had to clench his teeth against the pain of it and that kept him from saying anything.

“So…you left his body out there?” the boss said, his voice rising. He took a step towards the foreman, who went white in the face. Then he stopped himself. His lips thinned.

“I think he got bit by a stalker,” the foreman added desperately, gesturing at Richie. “So that’s why I put the cloth over his mouth, so he can’t—”

The boss’ face suddenly smoothed. “Of course. Of course. I see.” He moved back, one hand rising to tip his hat back as he looked at Richie. Then he turned around and made for the door. “Well, get him in the hole. We’ll send a message to the town right away. This is an outrage and I’ll see justice done for that poor man.”

“No,” Alecia hissed. She clamped her hand tighter on David’s shoulder. “Just stand.”

David couldn’t talk back. His teeth were still locked together and they didn’t come near to loosening as the foreman looked at him over Richie’s slowly-stirring body. And if that son of a bitch actually tried to ask…

He didn’t. He opened his mouth like he was thinking of it, but then he just shook his head and got off his horse. The son of a bitch walked over and cut the ropes keeping Richie’s legs in the stirrups, then hauled Richie down from the saddle; David heard Richie’s pained grunt and began pushing his knuckles into his legs.

The foreman dragged Richie by his bound hands up the front steps, across the porch and then to the door. Mary had come out to stand by it, and just in the hall David could see Tico’s silhouette. They stared at the foreman with faces like stone. He tried to meet their eyes, muttered a curse at them when his shoulders shifted uneasily under their gazes, and then pulled Richie into the house.

Alecia let David go when they couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore. She went over and grabbed the horses’ reins before they wandered off, then looked down at the leather wrapped around her hand.

“You coming for dinner?” Mary asked, coming out to the porch rail.

“I don’t think so.” David bent over and rested his hands on his knees for a moment, then slowly straightened up. His head was pounding and he had to screw his knuckles against his temples to get some relief. “No.”

Mary sighed. “You better. It’s going to be interesting.”

David looked sharply at her, but she was watching Alecia, who was still toying with the reins. Then Alecia snorted and threw her shoulders back. “Come on, Bryan,” she said. “Let’s get these away.”

She held out the reins to Richie’s paint. He didn’t take them right away and Alecia sucked in her breath. Then she swallowed down whatever she’d been about to say and just waited for him.

“All right,” David said. He rolled his hands a few times against his legs, then shivered. Then he stalked over and grabbed the reins from her.

* * *

Tico didn’t ask anything when David came back from the stables. He’d come out of the kitchen so maybe he’d been helping Mary, and maybe she’d told him—but David didn’t want to talk about it. And Mary just told the two of them to go set the table, since she had to put together the tray for the boss.

The foreman was already in there, perched on a stool in the corner and watching them lay out the plates. Mary had given David one more than usual and David carefully put that one at the head of the table. He heard the foreman grumbling something, but turned his back to the other man. He was supposed to get the pitcher from the middle of the table and fill it with water, but his hands felt as if he’d gone out in winter without gloves and he thought he might drop it if he tried.

David stepped back, scratching at the side of his face, and then Tico came in and got the pitcher. The other man nodded towards the chairs stacked up against the wall and David went to pull them out instead.

It was the quietest meal David had ever attended. Everyone seemed to take care to not even let their knives scrape their plates. Even so, the foreman was jumpy, and the only time there was any sound was when he was snapping at one of them for no reason. He snapped at Mary just for walking into the room.

“Boss is wanting some more water, but I just burnt my hand,” Mary said. She tugged at a towel wrapping her right hand. “Somebody else needs to bring it.”

“Useless fucking…Bryan.” The foreman jerked his head at the door.

David paused, then put his knife down and started to push back from the table. He stopped when Mary cleared her throat.

“He wants a lot of water,” Mary said tonelessly.

“Working hard,” Alecia said under her breath.

The foreman’s head went up like a dog scenting meat. He stared at her while she looked at her plate like she didn’t notice. “You help,” he finally said, smiling unpleasantly. “Got to admire the boss, he never stops. Should do like he does.”

Alecia put her hands down on the table. Her fingers whitened under the pressure. Then she pushed himself to her feet and went by Mary at a hard clip. David had to hurry to catch her before she went too far down the hall.

When he got her arm, she swung it back to push something against his leg: a crowbar. He knew the foreman was still back in the mess room and they were the only ones in the hall, but he still shoved it up his sleeve. “So—”

“Means he drank the coffee she made him,” Alecia muttered. She went around the corner and then stopped as they faced the door to that bastard’s room.

David glanced at her, then reached out and knocked on the door. He had to bite his lip to keep from trying it right after; Alecia’s lips moved, counting off, and when she got to ten David put his palm flat on the door and pushed.

He started and Alecia froze halfway through the doorway. Then she saw the limp body on the floor by the far wall and hit his shoulder. “Goddamn it, _breathe_ ,” she muttered.

Ignoring her, David pulled the crowbar out of his sleeve. He set it on the floor and then went to the head of the bed, while Alecia went to the foot. They hauled it out of the way and then David grabbed up the crowbar, jamming it into the floorboard nearest to him. He heard something move underneath and swore, and then he couldn’t stop swearing, even when Alecia told him to shut up because they hadn’t gotten the foreman to take any and he might still hear.

The board came up and David moved on to the next. Alecia started to help, then stopped pulling at it and stuck her arm through the hole. She moved it around, then got hold of something and hissed. “Me. Me and David.”

Then Alecia frowned down into the dark space. She put her other arm down there and then came back up with a twisted length of bloody cloth. A moment later, David got the second board up. He pushed it aside and a pale oval slowly came into view. Richie stared up at them. His lips were raw from the gag and the blood on his temple had clotted near to black. “Fuck.”

“Later,” Alecia said, and then she giggled. It was a sharp, high, hysterical one and David hit her on the side to make her stop. “Shit. Shit, look, get up—”

David had to put his arm down and help. Richie couldn’t put weight on his left side, and when David grabbed his left wrist, all the color drained from the other man’s face. Wincing, David tried further up Richie’s arm and then just gave up and decided it was better to get Richie out quick instead of careful. He pulled up till Alecia could get her hands under Richie’s arms, and then between the two of them, they dragged Richie onto the floor.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Richie gasped. He jerked over onto his right side, then onto his back, pulling his left hand up against his chest. “Fuck, Dave, fuck, that son of a bitch _left_ Jon for them.”

“So much for friendship.” The boss cocked a pistol in either hand. “If you hadn’t told them that…well. Seems I’ll be going to the bank soon for another three bonds. Now get down.”

The bastard had nodded at David, who didn’t understand. Sighing, the boss nodded again, at the hole. Then he laughed at Richie’s sudden, vicious stream of curses. “Either you can have them keep you company alive or you can have their bodies to talk to, but they’re going down with you.”

Alecia shifted her weight. David wanted to look over at her but the small black circle of the pistol’s end held his eyes.

“No,” the boss said, almost kindly. “No, if you were going to be this foolish, you should have been ruthless as well. But you weren’t. You are here, and the others are locked in the mess, and now I believe that I’m being brought the key…”

A heavy step crossed the threshold just then and the boss smiled.

“Didn’t need one,” Jon said, slumping against the jamb.

* * *

They all looked at him like he’d risen from the dead, Jon thought sarcastically. Then another streak of pain went through his arm, making his revolver waver, and he had to force up his—more injured, by a hair—other arm so he could use his hand to steady his elbow. He saw the rancher relax and nearly shot him then. “You have gold out there,” he said.

That stiffened the worthless bastard up. He stared at Jon for a moment, then glanced at the three on the floor. Then he looked at Jon again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jon’s eyes started to close out of sheer frustration and he had to push his leg into the edge of the jamb, digging it into one of the many slashes covering him. “You have gold, and you have a resurrected stalker guarding it, and you are a damn _fool_. Do you know—do you have _any_ idea what happens when you—”

“You!” The foreman. Standing at the end of the hall.

Jon pivoted around the jamb and shot him. The other man flew back into the wall, his arms dropping to his sides, rifle clattering to the ground, and then Jon realized he didn’t know whether the man had been aiming at him. He blinked, then hissed and swung the revolver back.

The rancher had both of his guns trained on Jon but he hadn’t managed to squeeze the trigger in time. He and Jon stared at each other and Jon could see the sweat beginning to bead up by the man’s hairline.

“I’m sorry,” the rancher finally said. “He wasn’t supposed to do that to you.”

“Which part?” Jon muttered. He was watching the other man’s hands. They kept tightening and loosening around the gun. “Letting me find the gold? Or leaving me out there so you don’t have any more blood to wake them up?”

The hands tightened. “He panicked. He doesn’t understand what…how it works.”

“Well, I don’t think you do either.” Jon’s arm was starting to sag again. He caught it and hitched his shoulder up the jamb, but he knew the other man had noticed. He did not think he was in good enough shape to twist around the doorway in time and he was just going to have to try and pick his moment. “How many did you do? Do you—did you just buy them for that?”

The hands loosened. “You’re very interested in the welfare of my bondservants, sir.”

“How many?” Jon said again. His voice rose sharply and he grimaced. Maybe he’d just have to shoot and hope that, if the rancher didn’t miss, the others had been listening close enough to figure out what they’d have to do after. “How many of them do I have to kill _again_?”

The rancher’s mouth moved. He might have been about to talk, or laugh, or maybe even scream. They’d never find out, because something flicked across the room at him and he took his eyes off Jon. Then he twisted back, but Jon had already pulled the trigger.

One of the rancher’s bullets went wide into the other side of the doorway. The other one clipped Jon down the forearm, sending him slewing around the jamb to collapse against the hall side of the wall. The butt of his revolver came down on his knee, jarring the gun out of his hand. He stretched his fingers after it as it clattered to the ground, but a dizzy spell came over him and he had to put his head back against the wall.

“He’s dead,” said someone inside the room, as if they’d never seen a dead body before. Then they came out into the hall. “He’s dead.”

“I know,” Jon muttered. He moved his arm out and looked at the blood welling down the score the bullet had left. It crossed half a dozen other cuts and some of them had opened up again too.

Somebody else came up to the door, gait awkward and uneven, and then they stumbled so the first one cursed and scrabbled. There was a thump over Jon’s head, and when he looked up, a bloody hand bumping its knuckles against his face.

“You walked back?” Richie finally said.

Jon started to answer, and then saw him. He pulled himself around too quick and hissed when his body protested, but kept looking over the bruises and the cuts. David was holding Richie up by the waist and one shoulder, that and trying to talk Richie into sitting down, but Richie didn’t even seem to know how he was staying on his feet. His hand dangled in front of Jon, a swollen ring of blue-black flesh around the wrist.

“I got my horse to come back. He’s trained to…” Jon was looking at the fingertips lying just on the top of Richie’s cheek, where the scabs and bruises stopped, and wondering why David would do that, prod that, when he realized they were his fingers “…what, they thought they’d blame you?”

“Of course not. Everybody loves me,” Richie said, and he got his mouth to bend into half a smile before he had to wince.

Jon shut his mouth. He looked past Richie at David, then pushed his shoulder into the wall. Very slowly, he managed to slide up that and onto his feet. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Said they’re locked into the mess. I’ll get them.” Alecia came into the hall, a crowbar slung over her shoulder. “What were you two saying, about—about resurrected ones?”

Anger was good at keeping down the pain. “It’s when you pour blood from a stalker, or from someone like me, over a corpse. You can get them to—to start moving again. And they’ll act like animals, like dogs, and you can train them right up till they turn into full-fledged stalkers and kill you. He’s been bringing them back to guard some damn gold he’s got in that rock.”

David sucked in his breath, then jerked up now half-conscious Richie. He worked at getting the other man’s arm over his shoulders. “Shit. Tico said…the one from last night, he said he thought he knew them. He helped dig up the graves—when the storm took out the old windmill, they had us digging them up and moving the coffins so we could sink the new well.”

“You have a graveyard here?” Jon said.

“Out back, fifty yards away,” Alecia answered. She took the crowbar off her shoulder. “What do we—do we go out there and…”

“No, because that’s the difference between them and regular nightstalkers. These always try to come home.” Jon tried to remember how dark it had been when he’d finally made it to the house. “Close up everything. Right no—”

David abruptly lost the battle keeping Richie up. Cursing, he grabbed at the other man, but he just turned Richie off of himself. They tilted in Jon’s way and Jon put up his arms without thinking.

Taking Richie’s weight put him back on the wall. He gasped, the world briefly fading, and then banged his head against the wall. It woke him enough so that he could at least think about steadying their slip down to the floor; David scrambled to help, and they ended up in a tangle that was hopefully only slightly more injured than before.

Alecia had started to help, but she stepped back when she saw Jon was still awake. She glanced at Richie, then hissed under his breath. “All right, I’ll go and get everybody and do it. You…”

“I don’t think we’ll be running off,” Jon snorted. Richie’s elbow was in his stomach and his leg was pinned at a strained angle under the other man. He tried to fix both, nearly blacked out again and made himself wait for David to help.

After another moment, Alecia nodded. She turned and went off down the hall while David got Richie more beside than on Jon, then straightened out Richie’s leg. The other man crouched in place, cradling Richie’s ankle in his hands. Then he shook his head. “Can’t tell if it’s broken or not, it’s too swollen.”

“’s not,” Richie muttered. He moved his head on Jon’s shoulder a little. “Just landed on it wrong when he pushed me in. Doctoring me now, Lemma?”

“Should’ve given me the damn crowbar like I wanted you to. You probably twisted it another turn when you tossed it at that bastard.” David set Richie’s foot down, then sat back on his heels. He pushed his hand back into his hair, then took it out and looked at it shaking. “Jesus. All right, what about you?”

He was asking Jon now, but Richie lifted his head and Jon and David both thought the man was trying to sit up. David lunged and Jon pulled, and Richie just set his head back on Jon’s shoulder, closer to Jon’s neck. “Sorry I couldn’t stop him before,” Richie murmured. “Should’ve watched out better.”

“Doesn’t keep you from falling on me, does it?” Jon said after a moment. He held out his arm for David to see.

Richie didn’t say anything. Jon craned his head around and from what he could see, Richie was staring at all the blood on Jon’s arm. Then Richie twisted and this time he was trying to get off of Jon. He rattled himself against the wall and froze, white-faced, and Jon just managed to get his free arm back around Richie’s head. He pulled Richie back; he couldn’t tighten his arm much and it kept on sliding, ending up around Richie’s waist instead, while Richie stared at him in surprise.

“I was…joking,” Jon said after a moment, awkward enough to make David snort.

“You do like me,” Richie said, slowly starting to grin. He put his head down on Jon’s shoulder for the third time, his nose and mouth pushing up against the side of Jon’s neck. He twitched once, when David started ripping up what was left of Jon’s sleeve to bind up Jon’s arm, then settled. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

David rolled his eyes, then had to stifle a nervous-sounding laugh. “Just to keep you from bleeding out for now,” he said, tying off the makeshift bandage. “When somebody else gets around to helping me move Richie, I’ll do it over.”

“Thank you.” Jon twisted his arm a bit, trying to see if he had anything left in it. Then he put it down on his leg and tried to think about how he was going to hold a gun when one arm didn’t work and the other one was going fast the same way. “You have any idea how many we’re dealing with?”

“Eight,” Richie said. “Wait. No. Those ones that went at us, are they dead?”

Jon had to make himself remember. It already seemed like it’d happened days ago. “Two of them. There’s one left. I had to—they think I’m one. It’s just we were right there, in its territory, but once I got far enough away it stopped going after me. I’ll have to go back later for it.”

“Couldn’t wait to get back to me?” Richie asked. He tilted his head so his breath was grazing Jon’s ear.

David had been looking at Jon, frowning, not quite following what Jon was saying, but now he reached out and tapped Richie carefully on the arm. “Richie, for the love of God, can you stop? Do you know what you look like right now?”

“Pretty enough for me.” Then, after a few seconds had gone by and Richie still hadn’t managed a retort, Jon grinned and nodded at David. “It does shut him up.”

“I should’ve made Alecia stay with you two,” David muttered. But he was relaxing, his shoulders dropping. He’d make it till someone was freed up to help them.

Richie was still quiet on Jon’s shoulder, but it was a different kind quiet, without any tension to it. He pushed his face at Jon’s neck again, his hand resting its knuckles on Jon’s thigh, breath slowing almost to sleep. He felt comfortable, despite how tired and hurt Jon was at the moment, and maybe Jon did like it.

* * *

Eight minus two left six. Two of them David had known. He wondered how much they’d still look the same, then grimaced and slammed the shells into the shotgun. After he’d snapped shut the breech, he pushed it aside and picked up the next gun.

Tico came through the door, then stopped and put up his hands. He stayed there a few seconds, while David cursed and tried to put down the gun and instead dropped the shells, then slowly worked his way around the table. “You done?”

“No.” David grabbed one shell before it rolled off the table, then nearly cracked his head into Tico’s shoulder diving after the other. And when Tico had already gotten it. He cursed again, pushing himself back, and then didn’t look at the other man. “I’m fine.”

Tico didn’t say anything. When David looked up, the other man held out his hand. He waited till David passed him the next shotgun, then dropped in the shell he’d caught. Then he held it out for the shell David had. Once David had jammed it in, Tico flicked the gun so the breech snapped shut.

“I hope they don’t look anything like they did,” Tico suddenly said. He held the gun so that the barrel pointed down and stared the same way. “I don’t know if I can shoot that in the head.”

“What?” David didn’t mean to accuse the man or anything like that. He just hadn’t been ready to talk about it.

Wincing, Tico flipped the shotgun up and laid it on the table with the rest. Then he reached across David for one of the pistols and some ammunition, and he took carbine bullets. He almost tried to load one before David grabbed the box from his hand; his fingers were chilly and they twitched sharply against David’s before they let the box go. Tico glanced at David, then pulled his shoulders up and dropped them.

“It’s bad enough killing a living person,” he muttered. “And I said I’d never do that again.”

David chewed on his lip. He hadn’t felt the need to ask before, and he didn’t think he wanted to know now. But he didn’t know whether Tico _wanted_ to him to know, and—for a moment he had to admit he was angry with the other man. Just bringing it up now, for the love of God.

“Oh, good.” Jon swayed in the doorway, offering them an apologetic smile for the surprise. Then he worked himself off the jamb and limped over to the table, his eyes running over the guns. They stopped on one—the rifle Richie had bought back in table, David thought distantly—then rose to David. “So everyone’s got an idea of what to do?”

“Alecia posted us around, in two shifts,” David said. He started to go on, then put down the box of bullets. Then he came around the table and reached for the other man. “You’re supposed to be lying down.”

Ignoring him, Jon began to rummage around in their ammunition. “Shoot for the head, stay away from their mouth. The nails can cut you up, but they’re usually not going to kill you.”

“You’re supposed to be—” David began again, more sharply. Then he dropped back against the table, exhaling in frustration. “Look, if he’s bothering you, I can just _tie_ him down.”

Jon’s hand stopped clinking around in the bullets. Then he lifted his head, slowly, and turned towards David. “Ah, no,” he said, just as slowly. He blinked twice, then shook his head and just kept himself from flinching. “No, he was out when I left. If you don’t mind, I’ll just help myself to some of these.”

He meant the bullets, and he looked at Tico too at that point. Tico shrugged and Jon began to pick them out of the box, only to start when David snatched them away from his hand. He reached for them, winced, and had to grab the table for support; when they’d finally gotten the man onto a bed, David had thought that Jon’s arm would be the worst of it, but then Jon had peeled off his shirt and shown all the ragged cuts wrapping around his back and torso. He had a swollen knee too, as if someone had tried to break it against a rock, and all in all, David didn’t know how the man was standing, let alone had dragged himself across the plains in time to save them.

“You don’t think you’re going to sit up with us,” David finally said. He put down the box so Jon could get it if he wanted, then sighed and pushed his hair back with both hands. “Look, we just need to wait it out till morning, right? Then they stop moving and someone can ride for town. We don’t need to be inviting them in.”

“I wasn’t suggesting any such thing. Sitting and waiting’s what we should do. Heroics are likely to get someone killed and I think we’ve got enough dead men around.” Jon’s eyes flicked to the box, then went back to David. Then he snorted, leaning against the table. “I’d just like to make sure my chambers are full, in case one gets in. I had to leave my pack back there.”

David nodded shortly. He stood back, then swore under his breath and grabbed up the box again. Then he pushed it at Jon. He confused the other man, who’d obviously thought David was going to refuse him again, and their hands collided so the box rattled in David’s hand and almost spilled out. Then Jon got the edge of it. He lapped his fingers over that, hooked them around some bullets and let David put the box away.

“Thanks,” he said, straightening up.

“You can tell them,” David started. He lifted his hand in case Jon tried to go for the door, but the other man was already settling his weight back against the table, frowning at him. And he could feel Tico watching him, waiting to see whether David needed someone back there. “You know, tell them we did it. We did, after all.”

Jon’s face smoothed out. He looked at David for a while, so still that for one strange moment David almost thought the man had disappeared on him, and when David hadn’t looked away either. He just didn’t look like he should exist there, with the guns on the table and the scratched-up walls behind him, and his eyes pale and blue and steady.

Then he bent his head, tilting it towards the table, and his tangled hair cut off his gaze. He still had blood in it, making it look like the strands were rusted, and the shirt David had lent him was already stained at the collar where some of the dried blood had mixed with his sweat. “I shot both of them. I’ll tell them what happened,” Jon said. He jiggled the bullets in his hand, then pushed back from the table. “I’m going to lie down.”

David heard Tico move behind him and glanced back, then put his hand out to keep the other man from going forward. Tico looked at David, then at Jon, already halfway out the door. Then he put up his hand and closed it over David’s wrist; David still had his hand up. He pushed it back down to David’s side.

“Was it an accident?” David asked. He knew Tico knew what he meant when the other man’s hand dropped away. David twisted so his back was to the table and got Tico by the arm, pulling him back to face him. “Did they deserve it?”

“I was drunk,” Tico said after a long moment. He closed his eyes briefly. 

“Well, they didn’t hang you.” David pulled on Tico’s arm again. Then he moved his hand to take up some of Tico’s coat, so it’d be harder for the man to turn away. “Damn it, just—just shoot the damn thing if it comes at you. I’m going to shoot it if it even looks your way. I don’t care who it was before, it’s not them now.”

Tico grabbed David by the elbow and David expected to be pushed off. Instead the other man dragged down on it, making David slump against the table. David had to put his other hand back flat on the table top to keep from slipping off his feet. He was still unsteady when Tico put his other hand under David’s chin and held him up by that and kissed him.

“All right,” Tico said, his mouth still by David’s. He stayed a moment longer, then stepped around David and went back to the unloaded guns.

David heard him push out the chamber on a pistol and then click in six bullets. Then David turned around. He looked at Tico, whose head was bent, hands moving carefully but quickly between the boxes and the guns, and then he shook his head. “All right,” he muttered. “All right, damn it. We’ll just shoot them.”

* * *

They’d locked the bodies in the bedroom and moved Richie to the bunkhouse. It had too many windows for Jon’s taste, but at least they were along just one wall. From the bed Jon could have covered them all by himself.

If his arm wasn’t about two more steps from falling off, he thought irritably. He just about managed to reload his revolver without dropping any bullets, but bending over to lay that on the floor made him dizzy. Straightening up again left him sitting on the edge, waiting impatiently for his vision to come back. Once it did, he had to admit he was relieved to see Alecia sitting at the other end of the room. He wasn’t going to be much use for this one.

Jon cocked his head. Then he pressed his lips together.

“Couldn’t help it,” Richie said. “You’re always thinking all the time. It’s too loud, keeps me awake.”

“Should’ve taken David’s offer,” Jon muttered to himself. He caught Alecia looking their way and turned away, then found himself looking at Richie’s raised brows.

A little water and soap had neatened up the bruises so it was easier to see exactly how far they ran. Just up to the corner of Richie’s eye on that side of his face, but not _in_ it, and how the man could still look that pleased with himself was a mystery to Jon.

“Took his shirt already, what else has he got?” Richie twisted himself more onto his good side, winced, and then flapped his hand under the blanket. “Lie down. You’ll feel better.” He paused, then snorted. “You want me to promise to keep my hands on my side?”

His eyes widened when Jon turned and began to lower himself on his back. He pushed himself out of the blanket, dragging that away from Jon, trying to make room that didn’t need to be made. Jon started to say so, then gave up and just got himself down as quick as he could so Richie would stop moving.

There was a moment where everything pulled tight and squeezed and hurt, and then the bed did its job and Jon began to relax. It wasn’t anything special but as his limbs began to settle into it, he thought he’d never felt so willing to lie still in his life. He’d have to fight just to keep up for the whole night. That or tell Richie to keep him up.

Jon snorted and the man next to him twisted sharply, then bit down on a string of curses. Richie was trying to hitch his arm up over his chest when Jon looked over, even though it didn’t look like his arm was agreeing with it. “I don’t bite,” Jon said.

“Damn,” Richie answered, after a long moment. He was halfway to making Jon believe in his woeful disappointment, but his eyes gave him away. He did stop wrestling with his arm, letting it slide back to bumping Jon against the shoulder. “How’d you get away? And don’t tell me you just walked till they stopped chasing you. You were passing out when that son of a bitch hit me in the head.”

“I told you. They think I’m the same as them—they can tell one of them already got to me. So there’s no reason for them to try and make me one, or feed off me. That one dragged me off a ways while I was out, then let me go when I woke up and it saw I wasn’t trying to go back.” Jon grimaced at the memory, then lifted his hand and ran it over his face. It’d been a while since he had had to get that near the damn things. He’d gotten as good as he was with a rifle for a reason. “Why aren’t you asking about the gold?”

Richie chuckled. He was shifting around again, his head alternately knocking into Jon’s ear and shoulder. “Why would I? So those two bastards were up to no good. All right, that’s them all over. Now they’re dead and the bank will take the gold when they come to collect the deed on this place. Not much use to me, except for getting me into trouble. So why do you think I care that one of those things bit you way back?”

“Well, you ask about it,” Jon said, looking over.

After some more twisting, Richie finally got himself comfortable. He pushed his face into the mattress so his nose was lying on some of Jon’s hair, his eyes closing. “I ask why you do things because I want to know. Doesn’t mean I mind them.”

His eyes stayed shut, and gradually Jon realized that unless he said something, they weren’t going to keep talking. Jon didn’t and Richie’s breathing began to slow and turn shallow. The man’s legs slackened and ended up pushing into Jon’s own, and when Jon carefully moved his right leg free, Richie’s face didn’t so much as twitch.

Alecia might have talked to Jon. She would look over every so often and even from the bed, Jon could see the curiosity dancing in her eyes. But she didn’t call out and Jon didn’t try. He kept himself awake by going over the attacks so far in his head, trying to pick out any details he’d missed. Then, when that made him clench his jaw too hard, he switched to thinking about what he’d have to do in the morning. The message he’d have them take to the telegraph in town, what he’d have to tell the townspeople they’d need to help. So far nobody had seemed inclined to start up a lynch mob, but that could change in an instant. He’d have to handle it carefully, especially considering that the only ones he thought deserving of a mob were already dead.

It was still hard to wait. There wasn’t a clock in the bunkhouse—the only one in the whole place was in the rancher’s bedroom—and since the windows were shuttered, Jon couldn’t see the arc of the moon. He knew they were halfway through the night when David came in to replace Alecia, but that was all.

Someone fired a gun at the other end of the house and it could have been still the dead of the night or the sun could have been just lifting over the horizon for all Jon knew. He had bolted upright, barely noticing what that did to his injuries, and now he was listening. At the other end of the room David had snatched the shotgun up from his lap, but he was still on his stool, as he should be. Nobody was calling for help yet.

Jon pushed himself back so he could lean against one of the bedposts, letting his left leg slide to hang over the side of the bed. He glanced over to see where he’d left his revolver, then sat back. He brushed up against something that moved and realized Richie was awake.

David began to lower the shotgun, then stopped himself and looked uncertainly at Jon. He mouthed his question at Jon, who shook his head, but Jon pulled his other leg off the bed while he was doing it. He held onto the bedpost as he leaned over for the revolver, then painfully pulled himself to standing against it.

Another gunshot went off, and this time a hoarse shout came almost at the same time. David jerked off the stool and twisted towards the door in one movement, then slapped his hand against the wall, catching himself. He looked at Jon again, the disbelief clear in his face, and Jon grimaced but gestured for the man to sit back down. Then Jon looked up at the ceiling. Crossbeams and then the roof itself. The underside of the slats had tar on them to keep out the rain. He tried to remember how thick the slats had looked when he’d been on them last night.

“Where—” David shut his mouth when Jon looked at him, but kept coming till he was standing just across from Jon “—where is it?”

“I think…” Jon was lifting his hand to point when the slats rattled.

David whipped around and fired through the roof before Jon could stop him. Jon got hold of the other man’s shoulder before he wasted a second shot, the nightstalker scrabbling across the roof above them. He dragged David around, then jerked them to a stop as the noises suddenly ceased.

“Where is it?” David hissed.

“I’m trying to—there are two of them,” Jon muttered, staring up at the rafters. And he was still dizzy from standing, and he needed his head clear but he couldn’t make it do that. He bit his lip and tasted blood, and that still didn’t help. “Damn it.”

The scrabbling abruptly started again. David stiffened, then drew in a breath like he’d been drowning and had just broken the surface. He was still under Jon’s hand. Then he yanked free and lifted the shotgun. He tracked the movement for another second, then let off the second barrel. 

That one hit, but it wasn’t fatal. Jon began to say so but David was hunched over the shotgun, snapping in two more rounds, and then Jon caught a trace of the other one again. He stepped towards one of the windows and something above them crashed through the roof.

Jon and David both spun at the same time, and then just in time David yanked the shotgun away from the stalker, keeping it from grabbing that and dragging him forward. But he swayed the wrong way, right into Jon’s line of fire, and Jon jerked down his revolver. David kept going, lunging all the way around, and the moment he was clear he fired both barrels. 

Most of the stalker’s head disappeared, and the rest of the body flopped to the ground. Panting, David stepped back, his shotgun dropping, and the second one jumped through the hole at him.

Jon wasn’t trying to aim precisely. He just wanted his shot to knock the stalker off enough for David to duck away, and it did that. But David dropped his shotgun. He had thrown himself behind the nearest bunk before he realized, and by then the stalker was on its feet and between him and the gun. Swearing, Jon brought up his gun and shot again, but his arm was too weak and the bullet went into the nightstalker’s shoulder. It skidded a few feet, crashed into another bunk, and then scrambled up onto the top bed. Jon’s third shot knocked splinters from the bed as the stalker leaped across to land on the opposite bunk.

Fourth shot hit wood again, but it made the nightstalker rear back and forget about climbing over the edge and going for David. Instead it twisted around and went for Jon, who fired his last two bullets into its head and then stumbled just clear of having it fall on him. He backed into the edge of the bunk and knocked his leg out from under him, falling onto the bed. Then he watched as a third stalker landed right in front of him, one hand already stretching for his leg.

Its hand slapped down on his calf, then slid off to do the same to the ground. His ears still ringing, Jon looked at the caved-in skull before him, then across the room. Richie slipped down the wall till he was sitting on the ground next to David, white-faced with his legs tangled in front of him, barely holding onto the shotgun. “Five?” he said hoarsely. He put out his hand and groped in the air for a moment, then dropped it onto David’s coat. He pawed at the pocket. “Dave, give me another—shit, tell me you’ve got more in your other one.”

Jon looked back up at the hole in the roof, then winced at a pair of gunshots in the distance. He shook his head, then leaned over and thumped his head against the bedpost. He needed to—no, he knew. “No. No. None.”

“Oh. Oh, good.” Richie let the shotgun’s weight carry it out of his hand, across his thigh and to the ground. He put his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

For a few moments they all just breathed. David was gasping a little, till he coughed hard and deep, and then he managed to straighten himself out. He put his hand out on Richie’s shoulder and the other man stirred, then opened his eyes. Then David took it off and put it behind him, and began to get to his feet, moving as if he’d an old man’s knees. “Fuck.”

“Do I still get to sleep with him?” Richie said. He looked up at David, then flapped a limp hand. “Dave? Want to give me a—”

“Oh, fuck you, Richie. I mean…” Shaking his head, David stepped out from between the bunk and Richie. He looked at Jon, who nodded, and then walked unsteadily out of the room, muttering something about getting Tico to help clean up.

Richie blinked, arranging his face into a confused expression. Then he jerked around and looked genuinely confused. He lifted his hand, put it down to shove away the shotgun, and then lifted it again just as Jon got himself around the dead stalkers. His fingertips touched Jon’s waist, then skittered down Jon’s hip before dropping away; Jon had to stoop to get his hand under Richie’s forearm. Then he paused, trying to adjust his weight without losing his balance. He put his other hand against the bed and carefully got down by the other man.

“You’re welcome,” Richie finally said. He shifted his leg. “So…it’s just about done.”

“That one back at the rock, and I’ll look around to make sure I didn’t miss something. God knows this has been one twist after another,” Jon muttered. He had to sprawl his leg out to keep the weight off his sprained knee, and move his hand to the wall by Richie’s head. “Where’s your splint?”

“Hmm?” Richie lifted his hand, then blinked. He moved a finger, blinked hard and used his other hand to cradle his wrist as he gingerly lowered it to his thigh. “Oh, I—”

His mouth stayed slack under Jon for the first moment. Then he made a low, quiet sound, pushing his head forward. It wasn’t hard but they didn’t need any more bruises, either of them. 

Jon sat back and Richie was smiling at him. Not grinning, his mouth curved but no joy in it. “If you’ve got all that to do still, it’s a little early for the goodbye, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes,” Jon said. He pulled himself around till his back was to the wall, then leaned against the other man, mindful of Richie’s wrist. Then he put his head on the other man’s shoulder, listening to Richie sigh.

* * *

“I don’t think the coroner’s going to believe that,” Joan said, shading her eyes with her hand. She scratched the side of her forehead, then picked her hand up off the saddle and used it to fan herself. “Neither of them look like they’d been bitten.”

They were sitting their horses a few yards from the rock, watching the bank’s men tally up the gold coins hidden behind that false wall. Another couple yards from them was the bonfire with the last nightstalker corpse on top of it, burning merrily away. They were supposed to be tending to it but Joan, damn her, was in one of her moods. “You _are_ the coroner,” Jon sighed. “And I thought I was glad they sent you.”

“You are glad to see me.” Joan shot him a sideways look, then broke out into a laugh. “It’d be justified even if they weren’t halfway to stalkers, just because they were resurrecting the damn things. And for what? A couple bags of gold coins the Spanish left behind when we moved them out of here? They were making plenty of money already. Man knew how to pick his bondsmen.”

Jon looked back at the rock. The bank men were on the last bag, and the fire was going strong, so hopefully they’d be leaving soon. His knee was good enough to ride, but it certainly wasn’t good enough to make it an enjoyable experience.

“Relax, Jon. I’ll go along with it. The idiots who caused all this trouble are dead so justice has already been done, by my lights.” Then Joan swung herself out of the saddle. She handed her reins to Jon and went to speak briefly with one of the bank men, then came back. “I’m just wondering why. You do know that criminals forfeit their property too, don’t you?”

“But forfeiting for that means it stays local. Forfeit due to nightstalkers means it goes to the territory government,” Jon said. He shrugged and carefully shifted his weight, hiding his wince. “The locals haven’t been too bad, but you know what they do sometimes, because they don’t know. Everybody just gets so worked up about stalkers and they want to get rid of whatever’s around to remind them.”

“Well, they’ll go out with the gold, so nobody’s going to be lynching Mr. Sambora.” Joan pulled herself back onto her horse, took back her reins and then rolled her eyes at Jon. “Or am I not supposed to see a six-foot puppy trailing after you? When he can’t even walk proper yet?”

Jon looked away, pushing his hand against the side of his face. Then he sighed and flapped his fingers at her. “All right, all right.”

Surprisingly, Joan didn’t laugh. She was studying him when he turned back, her eyes slightly narrowed. Then she nodded at the bank men. “You know you get a cut of that, on top of the usual fee. It’s old enough. It’ll go under the treasure law, and you’re the only finder around who’s alive and legally allowed to collect.”

“Also the bonus for dealing with resurrected ones,” Jon added. “You thinking of turning banker yourself?”

“No, just wondering.” Joan examined the back of her hand. “I do occasionally take dictation. For people I like, when their arm’s too bad for them to write it themselves.”

Jon snorted. Then he pushed himself back in the saddle, looking out across the plain. “Thanks, but I already sent a couple telegrams. Should have all the paperwork in place by the time they get to the capital. You’re riding with them back, aren’t you?”

“I am, but you’re going to let them get all the way there before you tell them? You don’t want to say now?” Joan asked.

“Well, far as I can tell, none of them are from around here. They get up there, they can get to wherever they’d like,” Jon said. He put his hands down on the saddle and twisted his leg, then unhooked his boot from the stirrup. Then he reached down and began pressing around his knee, trying to stretch out that ache. “And I’m headed for the south in a few days. Telegram came back this morning. I don’t have time.”

He knew she was looking at him, but he ignored it till he’d gotten his knee to at least make him think it’d last. When he straightened up again, Joan was rolling a cigarillo. She offered him it, then stuck it in her mouth when he refused, striking the match on the palm of her hand.

“You still look like hell,” she said. “Better than when I first came, but still bad.”

Jon nodded.

“Sometimes you should say no,” Joan sighed. She plucked the cigarillo out, contemplated its lit end and then blew a smoke ring around it. Then she put it back to her lips. “All right, I’ll watch them. And next time you make it back up to the capital, you stay over a few days so I know you’re sleeping at least once this year.”

“Thanks,” Jon said. He turned towards the bonfire, watching the last of the stalker’s corpse disintegrate in the heart of the flames.

* * *

The morning train got Jon into town a little after nine. He stopped by at the offices to have his initial report taken down and turn in his ledger, and then turned his horse towards the house he kept on the east side.

Jon had sent a telegram ahead, but hadn’t had time to wait for a reply. Still, they’d had a few days to press someone into going out and freshening up the place, so he was hopeful. He certainly had no intentions of doing anything except stable his horse and then curl up on the nearest comfortable spot for a good long time; the job hadn’t required much running around but he had had to keep up all night for most of the last week. Even he couldn’t thrive on that.

He turned down his street and mustered up a smile for the few neighbors he saw. It was Sunday and likely most of them were already at services, and those who were left would be on their way there. Still, they all seemed to want to stop and see if he had any news from the south—the local paper had run another story about the skirmishing at the border and gotten everyone worked up. More than a little irresponsible to Jon’s mind and he was happy to clear things up, but…he did wish it could have waited for the next day.

At any rate, he walked his horse into his stable just after the church bells had rung half-past ten. Someone had been in, he was pleased to see: the watering trough was filled and fresh hay had already been spread in the stall.

Jon settled his horse and then went out of the stable, heading for the back of the house. He was writing his final report in his head when he noticed someone was sitting on his porch. He stopped and the lanky silhouette swung its legs off the rail and then came up to just above the steps.

“’Morning,” Richie offered. He had on new boots, distinctly better in quality than what Jon had seen on him before. His hat was missing and the rumpled tail of hair hanging over his left shoulder was at least an inch longer. He wasn’t smiling and his eyes stayed on Jon but kept moving within that space.

“Good morning,” Jon said. He paused for another moment, then came slowly up the walk, pulling off his hat and then his coat. It was a warm morning and he could feel the back of his shirt sticking to him. “You been waiting long?”

Richie moved back to let Jon onto the porch, still sober-faced. He was pitching his voice a little low, too. “Slept on the swing there.” He nodded to the corner of the porch. His hat was perched over his rolled-up coat in the corner of the bench seat, both looking well-crushed. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“There’s a hotel down the street,” Jon muttered, staring.

“Well, I’m a stranger in this town.” Richie shrugged, putting his hands back behind his head. “Don’t know my way around.”

He didn’t quite look at Jon and anyway, Jon was remembering the clean, stocked stable. Jon snorted and Richie glanced sharply at him, then stepped away. The other man wandered towards the door, rubbing at his nose, and keeping his face down so Jon only glimpsed a glint in the man’s eye.

“Right,” Jon said, snorting again. He went over and picked up Richie’s hat and coat, and tucked them under his arm with his own as he walked back to the door. “When did you come in?”

“About when you paid them to take us up here and get our bonds released,” Richie said, his voice rising a little. He put his arm up against the door as if he meant to lean on it, then jerked it down and turned on Jon. “Did you think—”

Jon pushed open the door and went inside. He paused for a moment, sniffing at the stale air, and then turned left to where he remembered having a chair. It was there and he dropped their coats and hats on it. Then he looked up as Richie came after him, still talking.

He took one step, put up his hands and took another step so his palms met Richie’s chest and pushed the other man into the door. Then he stumbled, forgetting about the third step needed when the door swung shut. Richie grabbed Jon’s elbows, and then dragged them both down as his boot slipped and he slid down the door. By then Jon had caught his own feet up, and he caught the sides of Richie’s head between his hands, stopping it in place. 

Richie’s mouth was still open from snarling at him, and tasted better than Jon remembered. He yanked up on Richie’s hair, wanting more, wanting to have it without having to crick his neck, and Richie jerked into the door. Banged his elbow, cursed, then hauled himself up and suddenly had Jon by the hips, pressing them together, his fingers digging for purchase in the back of Jon’s legs. He kissed back like he’d been starving for it. Still snarling at Jon in his throat, his mouth burning on Jon’s lips, jaw, throat.

They seesawed against the door a few more times before trading that for the floor. Somehow Jon ended up on his back, trying to clamp his legs around Richie’s thigh while the other man left stinging trails over Jon’s waist with his nails, head deep into the bend of Jon’s throat, licking and sucking while he yanked at Jon’s leathers. He got one hip bared and the touch of cool air was like being stuck with a branding iron. Jon swore, wrapping his hand over the back of Richie’s neck, and his left foot thumped its heel into the floor.

Richie ran his hand down Jon’s other hip, stripping it, and then was trying to work his hand between Jon’s legs when Jon got his arm back and braced. Jon pushed them over, then crawled onto the other man, dragging up handfuls of shirt with him. He hissed as Richie palmed his cock, then slapped his hands down on the floor on either side of the man, his back bowing to the fingers wrapped around him. No teasing, no grace, just a sudden hot rush that came over Jon and carried him off before he could take another breath.

He came back to himself still leaning over Richie, his arms shaking, air wheezing through his mouth. Richie was touching his face—petting it, running his fingers over and over the line of Jon’s jaw. He looked up at Jon, still not laughing. Last thing from it, with the way his eyes were, hard and dark as coal, and Jon didn’t make the mistake of thinking the man was angry with him either.

“I’m going to be your partner,” Richie said. “You leave again and I’m coming with you.”

Jon still didn’t have the breath to talk. He moved his mouth a few times, trying anyway, and then looked away. Something caught his eye and he looked up, then swept out his arm.

The sound of the lamp hitting the ground made Richie slap himself up onto his elbows. Jon pushed him back down and stretched to dabble his fingers in the spreading pool of oil—whale oil, thankfully, someone had remembered to tell Richie Jon didn’t mind spending his money on good things. Then he sat back on his heels. He watched Richie push himself up again, then stare. Eyes wide and wondering, not so sure now, like a man seeing the rainbow for the first time. Once Richie lifted his hand and made to touch Jon on the thigh, but dropped his arm just before. Then he didn’t move till Jon pulled his hand back around and put it on the other man’s knee.

At that Richie started. He sat up, his hand feathering over Jon’s hip, and Jon swung one arm around Richie’s neck. When their mouths met Richie’s hand closed down on Jon’s leg, and then the man was all feverish motion again, dragging at his clothes, holding Jon up and then helping him push down. He drove his face into Jon’s shoulder, gasping, just keeping them still and joined for a moment. Jon bit down against the full, aching burn spreading low in him and pulled his arm tighter around Richie’s head.

The mouth against his throat moved. Then Richie shifted his hips, not raising his head. He pressed his mouth to the heartbeat in Jon’s neck, his hands running down Jon’s thighs, and Jon pushed himself up. Richie lifted his head and pulled Jon back down, pulling them over on the floor, digging himself as deeply as he could into Jon’s body. His hand slid off Jon’s leg, then smacked against the floor, adding another shiver to the one he was putting through Jon. Then again, and then he clawed up the floor board to twist his fingers in Jon’s hair, his mouth coming down on Jon’s one last time.

They collapsed in a tangle. Jon let his head loll against the floor, staring at the hazy ceiling till he thought he was breathing again, and not just drinking air.

“So.” Richie stirred. Nuzzled Jon’s ear. “Nice house. The lamp wasn’t bad either.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jon said. A laugh was trying to climb up his throat but that was still too raw from all the gasping he’d just done. “Who told you? Joan?”

“She bought us a round of drinks after she told us, and then told me…” Richie ran out of breath and just laid his head by Jon’s for a moment “…told me stop wasting it, you’re too much of a fool for that. Also, offered me a job.”

Jon stopped laughing, then twisted sharply as Richie lazily drew his fingers down Jon’s still-shaking thigh. He hadn’t had any call on the other man at that point, and Joan knew as well as he did how rare it was to find anybody who wouldn’t lose their nerve in front of a stalker. And she’d know better than to offer again. Jon could be a fool at times, but he did know when he had something he’d best not pass up.

“So where have you been staying?” he finally asked Richie.

“In that hotel. David and Tico are still there, and Tico’s probably trying to pull David off the piano,” Richie said, his lips grazing Jon’s jaw. “Alecia didn’t want to wait around in a room and signed up for a drive to the river, and Mary went to keep her honest. But they said once I pinned you down, they’d like to come by. You know, if you’re not running right back off to hunt stalkers again.”

“I thought you were coming too,” Jon said.

Richie pushed himself up on his arm. He looked at Jon for a while, and then he laid back down. Jon felt the grin starting against his neck and sighed, then wrestled his arm up around Richie’s shoulders. He pulled that grin close and held it there.


	2. Down in the Gully

Joe Perry made for a lean, long-legged shadow on the porch, with a brush of dark curly hair clubbed back at the base of his neck, and when he stepped out into the dying light, a neat gray suit, as good as any eastern bigwig. He cracked a thin smile at Jon’s greeting but it was gone before his foot had come down on the first step. “Heard you were looking for me.”

Jon paused, blinking hard. Then he went up the rest of the walk more slowly, the day’s mailbag swinging from his shoulder. He livened up again when Richie opened the door halfway through introductions, but sobered as soon as it came time to invite Joe inside. David followed behind them, leaving room for Richie to crowd up to Jon as usual, and lingered in the doorway as Jon offered Joe the contents of that fancy lacquered liquor cabinet in the parlor.

“You’re not?” Joe asked, in the middle of accepting a glass of brandy.

“I was thinking about it, but I didn’t…” Then Jon glowered into his glass. “Joan. Damn it.”

Somebody tapped David on the shoulder and nearly made him jump out of his skin. Since it turned out to be Alecia, she just smirked and slung her arm around his shoulders. “Who’s he?”

“Perry,” David muttered.

In the parlor, Richie was fiddling with the cap to the brandy decanter, watching Jon try to figure out whether he wanted to go have it out with their favorite coroner right now or not. The both of them started when Joe snorted. “Look, Steven’s not around, so I think it’s all right.”

Jon looked up from his glass, quiet, the way he had when he wasn’t going to offend somebody to get what he wanted, but wasn’t going to let it go either. He put back his hand without looking and batted at Richie till Richie put down the cap. “I had to deal with a resurrectionist about three months back. It’s settled, but they’re still wondering how he found out how to do it in the first place. It’s been Joan’s new cause.”

Another thin smile slid across Joe’s face. He turned his glass in his hand, then shrugged and sprawled down in the nearest chair. “Since you got settled, I guess,” he noted, glancing at Richie.

Now resting her chin on his shoulder, Alecia snickered into David’s ear. “Still don’t know which one’s better at blushing. So, Perry, as in the one partnered up with a—”

“Well, wonder why she sent me a telegram in that case, since Steven’s the one who’d know about those things.” Joe propped one arm up on the chair so his glass was in front of his face and twisted it some more. “I don’t know where he is. He fucked off a month ago and just left a couple eagle feathers stuck in the front door.”

“Chasing visions again?” Jon offered tentatively. When Joe looked up, Jon lifted his hand halfway to the brandy decanter. Then put it down, and reached for the whiskey instead. “I guess you don’t know.”

“No, I don’t.” Then Joe drained his brandy. He held out his glass for the whiskey and drank that off instead of looking it over, and then put his head against the back of the chair, his eyes closing.

Jon glanced at Richie—who had been and was firmly staring at Joe—and then down at the floor. He jiggled the whiskey bottle in his hand, then sighed and set it back in the cabinet. “Well, I’ll put you up tonight, and I guess tomorrow we go talk to Joan. If she wants to look into it that much, she can find him.”

His eyes still shut, Joe nodded. He stretched out for a few more minutes, while Jon searched for and gave up on finding something else to say, and then began pulling himself up when Jon finally started drinking his brandy. He dropped his arms onto his legs and shrugged, then got up and clapped Jon on the shoulder. Then he gave his empty glass to Richie, went by David and Alecia, and started up the stairs without another word.

David took a step after him but Jon called him back. “It’ll be the one on the west side,” he said. “If it’s a little dusty, it’s fine. Joe’s not that choosy.”

“He already dropped his bags up there,” Richie added. There was a little edge in his tone, enough to get Jon looking at him. “When he came in. Said he always uses that one.”

“He does,” Jon said, after a long pause.

Richie cocked his head. “So how often did you two fuck?”

Jon’s eyes went wide. He inhaled wrong, coughed, and had to put his hand on the cabinet to steady himself. 

“I would, so I think you would’ve,” Richie went on. His mouth was starting to twitch; against David’s back, Alecia had already broken down into laughter and was just about keeping herself on her feet by squeezing the feeling out of David’s shoulder. “Nice to see you’ve always gone for the tall, dark and handsome ones, by the way.”

After another cough, Jon hunched over. The glass of brandy went up under his hair and came back down considerably less full, but he didn’t say anything. He shook his head once and then was still, and David could see Richie’s smile fading. Then, when Richie had just started to reach for him, Jon straightened up. He just looked relieved, mixed in with his usual half-hearted irritation at Richie’s joking, which in turn meant Richie looked as if he’d be thanking God if he hadn’t been busy staring at Jon.

“Just a couple times.” Jon went over to the sofa and sat down. He sipped his brandy while Richie shuffled up to him, tried to find a clue in Jon’s distracted expression and then just sat down as close as humanly possible. “Generally, we were drunk and he was mad at Steven. Not like—this was back when Steven didn’t just wander off all the time.”

“Steven?”

“Long story,” Jon mumbled, looking into his glass. He glanced over at Richie, then at the doorway. “Oh, sit down. I mean it when I say it’s long.”

David took a step into the room, then paused when he saw Alecia going off the side. When he realized she was just pouring them drinks, he got himself a chair and flipped another one around for her.

“The _brujah_ , right?” Alecia said. She handed David his glass before sitting.

“The…” Jon leaned back and stared into space “…he’s…not quite. He’s…”

* * *

He looked like Joe’s eyes weren’t working yet, like somebody had put the wrong end of a telescope up to them and shoved the other end into a peddler’s bag. His fingers splayed over Joe’s face, leaving moist spots that made Joe shiver and try to twist away, only to remember that his body was broken.

“You fell off a cliff,” the man said, pulling his lips back from his teeth. There seemed to be endless rows of them and when he bent over Joe again Joe did think he was going to bite. Instead he laughed, his breath a steaming blanket suffocating Joe. “Stop moving.”

“Where—who—” Joe tried to get up. Choked on the pain and fell back, writhing, watching stars explode on the backs of his eyelids. He scrabbled with his hands and felt dirt come up under his nails.

It was still dark when he opened his eyes, but not dark like—they were inside somewhere. On the ground, but his hand clawed from dirt to something else. A horse blanket, maybe, and then the man caught his wrist and pulled his arm straight out. White-hot pain twisted up and down Joe’s left side, and for a long time he just struggled to breathe through it.

When it cooled down and just became a constant ragged bite at his nerves, his other arm was stretched out too and he couldn’t pull either of them down. The man was busy at his feet, looping something around his right ankle that slithered and then Joe thought he heard a hiss, and he threw himself up against it. A hard grip slammed down on his knee and held it still. Only part of him that was through the next bout of shaking.

The man sighed at him, muttered something about mules and roses, and then moved onto his other leg. By then Joe was too worn out to even keep his eyes open, though he was screaming at himself to get up, to get free, to get the hell away from whatever was happening to him. But he couldn’t stop the long slide back into the dark.

When he woke up again, his head was being cradled and he was spitting up some bitter, terrible drink, and being scolded for it. “You keep this down or I’ll stick my whole arm down your throat and make you.”

“Fuck you,” Joe garbled in between spits. He still couldn’t move his arms and legs.

A whole ocean of it was poured into his mouth, so much that even if he’d been swallowing, he couldn’t have taken all of it. Some went into his lungs and burned in his chest like hot coals. He twisted his head and the fingers under it fisted in his hair, forcing his head back till his neck was a shiver away from snapping. A broad palm clamped over his mouth, trapping in what was left of the drink, and then snaked over his nose as well till he had to swallow or drown.

He swallowed. The hand lifted, then patted his forehead. “I know it tastes like the devil pissed in your mother’s milk, but you’re going to need that hellfire in you later.”

“The fuck are you…” Joe was still coughing. He thumped his head against the ground. “The hell happened?”

Two fingers flicked his brow. “Sleep,” the man said, and he did.

The third time Joe woke up, he was splayed out under some kind of tent, with his wrists and ankles tied to iron spikes. He had a stack of blankets under him and from what he could see they were native, but most of the other things scattered around him weren’t. There was an Army-issue saddle in one corner, and a stack of rifles by it. Some Spanish-looking clothes hung up along the other wall of the tent, bright and gaudy, and then some…things hanging under them. They looked like bits of animals, dried up.

He got around to his feet and a pair of legs was between them. When he looked up, someone sluiced him down with two buckets of water, one right after the other, so he was drenched through. He shouted and threw himself up against his bonds, then collapsed. He turned his head over and spat and then blew out his nose.

“I was trying to clean you up,” said the man.

“Do I look clean?” Joe snapped. He was facing one arm, looking at a long, bloodstained tear in his sleeve, and he abruptly remembered the knife fight. “How long’ve I been here stinking in these?”

“You’re right.” The man walked around Joe’s feet and then got down by Joe’s right side. He had his knife slitting up the front of Joe’s shirt before Joe managed to get his head back around to stare at him. “Hold still. You want me to cut off something you like?”

Joe told him no, and then told him many other things he could be doing if and when Joe got away from him, and the man nodded and occasionally told him that sounded fun or that he’d done that one better and kept cutting off his clothes. When Joe jerked around, he’d just slice off whatever part he’d been working on and then wait till Joe got tired again. Eventually he had a pile of dirty strips by him and Joe was naked.

The man took away the strips and then did something over at the other side of the tent while Joe stared at the canvas overhead. He was tired and confused, and to the point where he was just wondering if he were dead and had done even worse at his life than he’d reckoned. “I fell.”

“Off a cliff,” the man agreed. He was clinking glass. “A very fucking tall one.”

“No, that was later.” Joe pulled at one wrist. He still hurt, and still mostly on his left side, but it was much better than before. “I fell off the—no, they knocked me off my horse. And my foot was stuck in the stirrup, and the damn thing jumped, and—there was a river. There had to be. I’d be dead otherwise.”

“I don’t think I saw a horse,” the man said in a musing tone. He was squatting over a pot and a collection of small bottles filled with all colors of liquid when Joe looked over at him. The mouth hadn’t all been due to Joe’s semiconscious state, but overall he looked less demonic than Joe’s first impression. Wild brown hair, the kohl smeared around his eyes thicker than most would like it, probably around Joe’s age, give or take a few years. “Anyway, you were up in a pile of driftwood. Maybe it went under.”

Joe’s eyes drifted to the pot. “The hell is…I’m not drinking it again.”

“You want me to kiss it into you this time?” The man picked up a bottle of violent purple and shook in a few drops, then started back as a puff of smoke came up from the pot. Even across the tent Joe could smell it. “It’s keeping you asleep.”

“Then I’m fucking not _drinking_ it,” Joe muttered. “The hell were you doing to me?”

“Sticking things into you, pulling them out, watching,” the man said, lilting his voice, like he was enjoying the memory. He put out his hand and grabbed the pot handle, then peered down as he swirled the contents. Then he got up and carried the pot over, and grinned down at Joe. “You got stuck too. Don’t you remember?”

“I—” Don’t and then did. That knife fight again, when they’d all run out of bullets and one had closed in too quick for Joe to reload. On fucking horseback, like anybody with full possession of their senses would try to stab somebody with a six-inch switchblade then.

Well, that bastard had and he’d gotten lucky. It’d gone across Joe’s left ribs and he remembered knowing the blade hadn’t managed to slip between them, had just scraped over bone, but it’d still hurt like hell. Hurt enough to make him rock back out of the saddle and he’d been already passing out before his horse had run out of ground. Which…

He stared at the things in the man’s hand for a while before he realized what they were. Long, thin, pieces of metal, almost like giant needles, except the man bent so Joe could look close enough and see that they were hollow. Then he tossed them into one corner and held out the pot. “Poisoned you, rattlesnake juice,” he said. “You drink this, it’ll go away while you’re sleeping.”

Joe tensed, but the man didn’t move for him. Just hunched there with the pot, looking at him, till his mind went back to those needles. He’d thought it was a knife. It’d flashed in the sun. He’d grabbed the other man’s reins, meaning to jerk the horse’s head over and make it break stride, hopefully trip and fall, and the bastard had stabbed under his arm and it’d felt…it’d _hurt_ so much.

And he’d been hunting them for selling nightstalker bait anyway. Stood to reason that if they could make up that, they’d know something like rattlesnake…whatever the man had just called it. Then Joe sucked in his breath, staring up at the other man. “Wait, then you’re a _brujah_ too.”

“I’m a sassafras princess, honey,” the man said, his mouth stretching into a wide, wide grin. He swung out his arm to take in the rest of the tent. “And this here’s my kingdom in the wilderness, where I’m waiting for some knight to sweep me up and ride me hard and home.”

“What the _fuck_ —” Joe started.

The pot flipped over and he had a mouthful. He gagged, swallowed reflexively and then tried to cough it back up. When the pot moved he strained himself as far from it as the ropes would allow.

“It’s the last one,” the man said after a moment, eyeing him. “I guess you could do without, but then you’d be feeling it for the rest of your days.”

“I already feel—I fucking survived a fucking stalker sucking my neck, I don’t need anybody telling me about feeling fucking anything,” Joe muttered. The inside of his mouth was like someone had painted it with kerosene. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Steven.” The man glanced at the pot, then at Joe. Then he shrugged. “What’d you want, some angel’s name?”

Joe snorted. “Looking at you?”

The m—Steven, he gave Joe another of those wide grins, like he was trying to stretch his mouth from horizon to horizon. Then he held up the pot. “Drink it and I’ll cut you loose.”

For a while they looked at each other. Most people didn’t care too much for that from Joe, but Steven seemed perfectly comfortable where he was, holding that damn pot and cocking his head like that. He looked like he could keep it up for years.

“All right,” Joe muttered. He flinched when Steven shifted his weight, then gritted his teeth and opened his mouth.

Steven poured it in little by little, as fast as Joe could bear it. Halfway through he stopped and went back across the tent to get Joe some water, which was a nice thought but which in practice made the next mouthful of that shit-tasting stuff even worse. Then he wiped Joe’s chin and throat off with his sleeve while Joe did his level best to not throw it all back up.

“Wonderful,” he said, getting up. He caught Joe’s rising indignation and laughed. “I _will_ , but I didn’t say when. You’re going to knock me on my ass, honey, and I ain’t stupid.”

“You goddamn lying son of a bitch,” Joe finally managed, watching the man walk away. The stuff was already kicking in and his eyes were closing, and the last damn thing they saw was that ass going away from him.

He woke up to the same sight God knows when. Steven was going out of the tent, but he came back a few minutes later with an armful of damp clothing that he pinned up on the far wall. Joe was still naked and Steven just about was as well, with no shirt and the leather of his pants worn so thin that Joe could see the outlines of the muscles in the man’s legs. His hair was twisted up in a wet tail over one shoulder. He didn’t have a princess’ face, but it wasn’t one anyone was going to forget in a hurry either, and the rest of him was making Joe start to think he’d knocked out some of his brains in the river.

“Want a bath too?” Steven called over, still hanging clothes. “Gave you one this morning, but if you’re so particular…”

“You…when I’m not awake?” Joe looked away. His limbs were feeling less stiff than they really should be, he thought, and the blankets under him were the same. Steven must’ve been hauling him outside while he was out, or else it should’ve been a lot fouler underneath. “The hell is wrong with you?”

Steven gave a shirt one last slap, then wandered over, wringing out his hair. His pants were native-style, with laces that weren’t laced, and hung on by a breath. This close Joe started seeing things like an old bullet scar in one shoulder, and a spiral of round scars on one arm, the way some of the natives marked up themselves with red-hot pebbles. “I dream a lot.”

“You dream,” Joe repeated slowly.

“Yeah,” Steven said, nodding just as slowly. He started twisting his fingers down through his hair to pull out the knots. Some of the water flicked off his hand onto Joe. “I was five miles downriver when I saw you. Broke my horse getting up here, just in time to get you off the driftwood before you drowned.”

Joe shifted, then grimaced. He wasn’t as stiff as he should have been, but it still wasn’t a bed of roses. “And how am I supposed to know you’re not lying your ass off again, like when you said you’d let me up?”

“I guess you don’t, until the next time you think you’re going to fuck that blonde whore, forget she’s a coldblooded snake who already sold you once, and get tossed out a window again.” Steven smiled and it was tight and small, and the look in his eyes belonged in that eerie time that sometimes came down over the plains, when it was between day and night and there wasn’t a wind and everything was silent. “You’ve been turning my mind inside-out for a damn year now.”

“I didn’t know,” Joe finally said. He shifted again. “How was I supposed to know? How… _how_ …”

Steven shrugged and sighed. “Fuck if I know. I’m a fucking madman, I’m not God.”

Joe looked away. He still heard the other man standing over him, heard Steven breathing low and regular, and heard the drip of water off the man’s hands. He pulled at his hands, then looked back. “You got me out of the river?”

“I got tired of watching you fuck around,” Steven said. “Wasn’t actually planning on you fucking up just when I got near, but I guess people just got to move with the wind.”

“Water, right?” Joe muttered. Another couple drops landed on his ribs and he twisted. Watched Steven’s eyes almost flick off his face for a moment. “When the hell are you letting me up?”

Steven stopped playing with his hair and put his hands on his hips, pushing his pants down a little. He actually seemed to be thinking over the question. “You’re a heavy piece of shit when you’re out, you know,” he said, eyes distant. “And I’ve got things to do besides wiping your ass.”

“Thanks.” Joe arched against the ropes again and this time Steven’s eyes dragged down near his waist before coming back up.

They looked at each other, and then Steven ran his eyes down again, slower, thinking that over. His right hand began rubbing over his hip like it had a mind of its own, each pass moving his pants down farther. He used his other hand to push his hair till it flopped over the other shoulder. “Do I need to let you up?”

“You are a fucking cocksucking shit,” Joe told him.

Steven smiled at him. Then he skinned himself out of one pant-leg, swung his bare foot over Joe, skinned out of the rest of his pants and got down between Joe’s legs. Joe was still trying to get his head up when Steven wrapped his lips around Joe’s cock and did like Joe’d called him. He put Joe’s head back down, hard, and then he got his hands braced on Joe’s thighs and made Joe pray for the first time in several years.

When he was done, he kept his mouth down there, running up and down Joe’s thighs, lapping over Joe’s balls, and Joe was still shaking when his cock started picking up again. Steven cooed at it, like—like him, and then snaked over on top of Joe, mouth first, and it might not win beauty prizes but that mouth raised hell under Joe’s skin, making it feel like he was filling up with liquid fire. It sucked and licked and bit, and then Steven’s hands came afterward, digging up under every twisting buck Joe made and making them go that little bit higher. The ropes didn’t break but not for lack of trying on Joe’s part.

Steven settled his mouth in the hollows of Joe’s throat, nursing the pulse, finding the old scar the nightstalker had made and burning it alive. His hands went away, then came back, planting on Joe’s hips, and then he sat himself on Joe’s prick. There was just a hitch, a sharp roll in the man’s back, and then he fucked Joe, never mind whose cock was where, _fucked_ him, fucked them into the ground till the whole world was spinning.

“I,” Joe said a while later. Too soon still, his voice barely there. He swallowed. “All right. You…you got me. So…let me _up_ , you fucking bastard.”

“You’re gonna knock me on my ass,” Steven said again, but his hand was already sliding up Joe’s right arm.

He cut the ropes to Joe’s wrists and then pushed himself back. Joe’s arms barely worked but he got himself up and pressed the forearms to either side of Steven’s waist so the man would stop where he could get that damn mouth with his.

* * *

“You a _brujah_ too, Jonny?” Alecia said. She’d been shifting in her seat for a while now, one hand pressing into the outside of her right thigh. “Knowing all the details?”

Jon rolled his eyes. He’d gotten tired of Richie trying to pet up his leg and had just let the other man drag him onto his lap, and was looking far more comfortable there than he usually did in company. “No, of course not. But Joe talks when he’s drunk, and Steven doesn’t need to be drunk, and…well, that one, basically everyone knows at this point.”

“I didn’t,” Alecia said, eyes bright.

David didn’t even bother trying to kick her. He was slouching as far as he could and still be seated, and he still wasn’t anywhere near ready to hear the rest of this story. He wished he had another drink, with plenty of ice, and also wished Tico wasn’t off on an overnight trip to that damn army fort. And if Richie nuzzled Jon’s neck one more time, David was going to punch the man, friend or not. He was human and he could only take so much.

“Take it they’re not fucking each other on riverbanks anymore,” Richie said. He was looking at Jon’s neck again, but wasn’t touching it. Yet.

“No, but for a long time they were fucking damn near everywhere else,” Jon muttered. He happened to look David’s way and for a moment the two of them shared the same irritation. “I do like Steven, I just want to say. But he’s…”

* * *

Joe slammed his rifle over the top of the wall, got off a shot and then yanked himself back down and around just as a scream and a cracking return shot came from the other side. He raised his hand against the dust spilling down over his head, then stretched his leg as far as it would go and kicked Steven’s ass. The other man tipped forward, catching himself on his arms, but other than that and a grunt, didn’t acknowledge Joe. Or that they were in the middle of a gunfight and stuck in a crumbling adobe hovel with two guns to five.

“What is he doing?” Jon hissed, frantically reloading his rifle. He winced as a bullet smashed through a damaged brick just inches from his arm, then snapped his breech shut and then twisted around, bouncing on his toes as he tried to time when to pop up. “Doesn’t he have a gun?”

“Steven! Steven, damn it, would you stop fucking with that and _help_?” Another shot whined over Joe’s head. They were starting to work their way up, he calculated. He watched Jon fire, curse, and drop back down to toss his rifle aside and pull out his pistols. “Steven, I swear, I will leave your fucking corpse here if—”

The other man finally turned around. Joe just had time to see Steven holding something that smoked in one hand before Steven stood up, casually pitched it over the wall and then stayed standing. For a moment Joe choked on his own breath.

Then he dove at the other man. He caught Steven by the waist and knocked them into the far wall, then grabbed the man’s head in both hands. He shook it twice before he realized it wasn’t bleeding anywhere, and all the blood was from what was smeared over his hands from the barfight. Joe breathed out hard and dropped on his knees, his hands slipping to Steven’s shoulders.

“What the _hell_ was that?” came Jon’s wondering voice.

“A little fucking present I was trying to tell you about, if you weren’t still kicking my ass,” Steven muttered. He eeled out of Joe’s grip and went the two steps necessary to cross the room, scooping up Joe’s rifle along the way.

After a long moment, Joe got up and looked over the wall himself. He saw four men lying moaning on the ground, grabbing at their eyes and nose, and then his rifle barked and he whipped about in time to see Steven lowering it, having just shot the fifth.

“Think I left mine back at the bar,” Steven said, hefting Joe’s rifle. He wiped at some of the blood Joe had left on his face, then pulled his sleeve over his hand and used it to scrub at his hair. “With my fucking drink, Joey. Next time you two decide to fuck the dragon, you want to let me finish sucking down my poison first?”

Poor Jon, having only met Steven in person the day before, was trying very hard not to ask Joe what the hell was going on. He fiddled with his pistols for another moment, then holstered them and pulled himself over the wall, mumbling about checking the bodies. Joe stared at Steven, then put his hand up to his temple and pushed in the heel. “Well, Steven, I don’t know if you noticed, but you were supposed to come down at nine so we wouldn’t even run into them.”

“If I came down at nine, you would’ve missed them.” Steven tucked Joe’s rifle under his arm and dug around in the folds of that rag-pirate coat he insisted on wearing, even though any half-decent shot could pick it out at two hundred yards. He pulled out a hip-flask, which he proceeded to shake at Joe and then unscrew for a liberal drink. “And they would’ve heard from that fucking excuse for a barman who’s now got my gun that you were looking for them, and fucked off into the canyons, and I don’t feel like wandering around them for the next two weeks.”

“You lived in them for four years,” Joe said. “And the point wasn’t to—we were going to set up across the fucking street and surprise them and you are supposed to fucking _tell_ me if you dream some fucking—I do not want your fucking _shit_ , all right?”

Steven held out the flask for a few more seconds. Then he shrugged and pulled in his arm. “I told you.”

“You have your head up your ass so far it’s a wonder my cock ever gets into it,” Joe snapped.

“I told you, you weren’t going to catch them if I came down at nine. That’s what I saw. I didn’t fucking see if you were going to catch them by staying across the goddamn _street_ , I can’t make myself _see_ what I want, I just _see_ it,” Steven snarled back. He swigged from his flask again, then stared into it. “I see you die a lot. I mean, I think I do. I can’t fucking tell the difference between what comes from some fucking bad shit I ate or drank or smoked before I went to bed and what’s really me seeing something sometimes, you fucking ass.”

Joe opened his mouth, then exhaled sharply. He stepped back a pace and breathed again, and looked over the wall. Jon was poking at one of the bodies. He looked back at Steven, who was still staring into the flask, then dug in his coat till he found his tobacco. He rolled himself a cigarillo and lit it, but had barely one draw before he tossed it down and crushed out the butt with his foot. Then he held out his hand.

Steven looked up, then at Joe’s hand. Then he shrugged and handed Joe the flask. Joe had a drink, handed it back to Steven, and then shoved the other man up against the wall. He had Steven’s pants half-off when Jon came back. Jon yelped, apologized and went away, and by then Steven had his bare legs wrapped around Joe’s waist and Joe didn’t really give a damn where Jon went.

* * *

“Lived in the canyons for four years?” David said. “What was he doing out there? Talking to the stars?”

“Probably did at some point,” Jon snorted. He shifted, realized that he’d just spread his legs over both of Richie’s knees and tried to pull his right over to join his left. Richie, naturally, wasn’t cooperating. “Something Joan’s always wondered is how the man’s still alive. Because as far as we know, he’s not—he never was bitten by a stalker. If he had been, sometimes the way that turns out, it lets you take a lot more, like with Joe, but he…”

* * *

Joe scraped himself out of a puddle he didn’t look closely at on purpose, then stumbled into the next room. His eyes crossed a washbasin and he dragged himself up to it to wash off some of the…whatever was caked and crusted on his face and hands. He didn’t remember much after the opium pipes had come out. Did remember, unfortunately, more of his latest job than he wanted—which was what last night had been intended to handle, damn it—and he cursed aloud as he put his hand down and accidentally knocked a bottle off the side of the sink.

As it crashed down, he saw the trail of blood on the floor. He went stiff and still except for his eyes, which followed the wavering red line along the wall, over a chair and then around a couch, going through enough shattered bottles to constitute a second trail. Then he made himself push back from the basin and go around the couch, glass crunching under his boots.

Steven was lying on a coffee-table behind the couch. His eyes were open and glassy but they were moving. They ran over Joe without a hint of recognition, then came slowly back. Then Steven sat up, moving like an old man, and as his feet came down Joe saw they were bare. He caught Steven’s ankles before the other man put his feet down on all the glass, then pushed Steven back on the table so his legs wouldn’t dangle that far and collapsed on the sofa, breathing hard.

“You had a fucking great time,” Steven said tonelessly.

“What?” Joe said.

After a moment, Steven flopped back on the table. He scratched at his cheek and soot came off his fingers where he’d held the pipe too close to the bowl. “I go and fucking walk with the ghosts of those poor bastards they were chaining up in that hole, and you went and had fun.”

Bits of last night painfully pulled together. “I… _offered_ you a turn. You went and fucking sat with those two redheads. What’d you want me to do, drag you home?”

Steven turned his head to look at Joe, then turned it away. His eyes weren’t any clearer. He sighed, scratching his face again, and then grabbed the edge of the table and yanked himself up onto his feet before Joe could stop him. He stood for a moment, looking at the blood coming out from under his toes, and then limped away. “If I feel like bleeding, nobody’s going to stop me.”

“Nobody goddamn knows!” Joe twisted around, then cursed and dove after the other man. He pushed Steven off the glass trail and into a chair. “Nobody knows, because you never talk about it till after it happens, and why the hell do I get blamed for not knowing what’s in your head? You think I like that? You know what I think? I think you like being the one with all the fucking cards, you like being high and mighty and keeping us in the goddamn dark. You’re not the only one who can see.”

Steven hit him on the jaw. Joe reeled back, then smacked Steven back in the chair by the shoulder. Then he grabbed the man’s arm, meaning to shake him, but he saw Steven’s eyes and the way they had rolled back, and for a moment he leaned over the chair and listened to himself rasp for breath. Then he bit back his curse and jerked himself backwards. He took one step looking at Steven, then turned on his heel and went to call a doctor.

* * *

“So why were you drunk?” Richie asked. He closed the door, then toed off his boots on the way to the bed. He crawled up by Jon, shedding his belt as he went, and then laid his head on Jon’s thigh just as Jon was pushing himself up, expecting something more aggressive.

Jon lowered himself back on his arms, a flicker of amusement going through him as he realized he was as disappointed as he was relieved about that. Judging from the way David and Alecia had gone off, he probably had been giving them all more details than necessary—although they would’ve heard it from some other hunter sooner or later—and he also had to admit he was more than a little…uncomfortable himself. “Bad jobs. Ones where more people died than should’ve, once I’d gotten there, or ones where something just came up where it shouldn’t have. I don’t usually get somebody to console me on those.”

For all his willingness to flout good taste and manners by groping Jon whenever possible, Richie was still oddly shy about compliments. He blinked hard, then smiled. Slowly, without the usual cockiness, but with a warmth Jon tended to prefer over the jokes.

“When that happens, I try to wait till I get back here and then to stick to somebody like Joan…who, by the way, was never interested,” Jon said, leaning against the headboard. “Though she did ask after David when she first met you all.”

“Maybe we should have her come over now.” Richie pulled at the collar of his shirt till it hung open. “Poor David, he’s going to kill Tico when he gets back.”

Jon snorted. He let his hand drift into Richie’s hair. “Anyway, once in a while Joan’d be out at an inquest, but Joe was in town. He’s been in more often lately. He’s done the southern circuit longer than anyone else and that’s the roughest one, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he was getting tired of it.”

“Steven getting tired of it?” Richie asked. He pushed his head up Jon’s leg, then rolled onto his arms and slid forward till he could start pulling at Jon’s shirt. 

“I always thought he liked it down there,” Jon said after a moment. “Suited him. But…”

* * *

Jon was probably more to most people’s tastes. He looked good and he talked good, and he didn’t fucking talk when he didn’t have to. He also didn’t get as drunk as Joe needed too often, but when it happened he left more marks than Joe did. Sanest one of them, maybe, and hardest businessman for sure, but he could fuck up against a clapboard wall as well as any whore.

He did prefer to take it back to his house if they could walk that far. That big airy place he kept looking like a painting, full of cherrywood and white oak furniture carved up with fruits and flowers, and him on the floor in the middle of it, scratching blood all over Joe’s back and twisting out of their muddy road clothes. He wouldn’t kiss on the mouth either, just like a whore, but he’d stick that mouth everywhere else. Trying to get him down long enough to spread his legs was like trying to tie a sidewinder into a square knot.

Those times, they always finished up by the back door, usually with Joe closest to it. He’d end up staying the night because he couldn’t make his body get up off the floor before noon, and then come around the next morning to see whether he’d blocked out something unforgivable with the whiskey and the laudanum and whatever else he’d dropped into his drink. By then Jon had cleaned up the floor and scrubbed his face, and wanted to know if Joe wanted to eat something, or anything else.

“You waste too much money on the hotels when you come up, when I have more rooms than I know what to do with,” he’d say, handing Joe a cup of coffee. “Or I don’t know why you don’t get a regular rent, like some of the others.”

Joe would slouch into a chair and watch the dried herbs hanging outside the window sway in the wind. “I used to, back when I first started and rode closer to here. It’s too far from the south to get up that often.”

“I don’t understand why you keep going back there either. It’s a living nightmare.” Jon cleaned up too well. He could keep up with Joe but he didn’t do it on a regular basis, and both of them knew he knew better than that. He wasn’t some fool reading the pulp books and thinking he’d make his glory and fortune off of blind courage, but he always got up out of their tangled messes and went out and went back to his business. What they did didn’t stay on him. “Every time I go down there I find out they’ve come up with some new way to make people miserable.”

“There’s some good in it too,” Joe said once, and Jon had pulled himself up, across the table, and propped his chin on his hands and looked at him with eyes like little pieces of cornflower china. “Steven took me once to this place, inside a cliff, where you could see blue rainbows all night long. It was like…like standing in a song.”

Eventually Jon had gotten up and poured him more coffee. He’d caught the edge of the cup with the kettle and that had made Joe look up.

“You never do visit when you’re down,” he’d said to Jon. “Just me coming round here.”

“You want me to?” Jon had said, lifting his brows. He’d stepped back and held the kettle handle with both hands, like some penitent schoolgirl. Then he’d snorted and went back to the stove. “Steven keeps asking, but I think that’s the first time you have.”

“Steven thinks you’re better than me.” Joe hadn’t drunk the coffee. “At understanding what he does.”

For a while he hadn’t heard anything from Jon, and when he’d looked up, the other man had still been by the stove. “I don’t try,” Jon had finally said. “I just think he’s gotten himself along for this long, so he must have figured out more than I could in the time I’d be around.”

“I suppose that’s it,” Joe had said. Then he’d gotten up and put the cup on the table. “He came back last time with a broken shoulder and a bag of eyes. He wouldn’t tell me whether they were from people or not.”

Jon had blanched, then had dropped his eyes to the floor. Then he’d shaken his head, slowly, as if someone had caught a fist under his chin and left him spinning. “Why do you go down there? When you know that’s…”

“He keeps coming back,” Joe had gone on, under his breath, his fingers still grazing the cup. “Longer and longer in between, but I keep thinking…”

Then he’d been silent. Jon had given him a few minutes, and then had started padding around the kitchen, flicking a hand over that dusty shelf, checking those bottles. The man couldn’t stay still, even with his big house and his bank account full enough again for a whole family to retire on.

“It fits better there,” Joe had said. “Even the…I understand those, why they happen. I don’t like it, but I understand it. Don’t always understand things up here, but it always made sense there. At least, it used to.”

“Put up here for the night,” Jon had told him. “I’ve got a meeting with the marshals later and likely I’m not going to be in till morning. Might as well have someone watch the place.”

That time, like the other times before, Joe hadn’t taken the man up on his offer. But he’d started thinking about it.

* * *

They ran into each other in the hall. Jon was slipping out, trying not to step on that creaky board and wake Richie, just meaning to get something for his dry throat from the kitchen, and he saw the shadow slide along the wall. He looked over and Joe was leaning against the window at the end of the hall. At first Jon thought the man was trying to open it, and then he saw the way Joe’s hands curled on the sill and realized they were facing each other.

“Liquor cabinet’s not locked,” Jon said after a moment.

A soft, dusty laugh drifted ahead of Joe as he pushed himself off the window and came down the hall. He was in his shirt-sleeves, with his tie still slung around his neck but no vest, and his cuffs open. “Thanks, but sounded like you had enough tonight.”

Jon winced, then pushed his hand back over the side of his warm face. Hopefully it was dark enough in the hall. 

“He seems to suit,” Joe added. He stopped across from Jon, dropping soundlessly back against the wall. Then he glanced at the far end of the hall. “Didn’t think you’d take up a whole passel of them all at once, but that seems to suit too.”

“You haven’t even met half of them,” Jon muttered. He pulled idly at his hair, then gestured towards the stairs. “Do you…”

Joe shook his head, then put it back against the wall. After a moment, he ran one hand over the top of his head and then dragged it behind, pulling the tie off of his hair. “I don’t know where he went.”

“Well, Joan—”

“I told him next time he ran off and came back wanting me to scrape up all the shit without even saying who’d shit on him, I’d lock the damn door. That and threw all of his opium in the river, because I was tired of him passing out when I was talking to him,” Joe added, staring at the ceiling. “Then I got up the next day and the whole place was clean, except for those feathers in the door. It didn’t even look like that when I bought it.”

“Did you look for him?” Jon finally asked. He knew Joe usually didn’t, too damn mad in the first place at Steven dropping whatever they were doing for no reason he cared to give out—and too much faith in Steven’s particular brand of cussedness to think the other man was ever going to let someone catch him down. But he was thinking at least if it got Joe irritated at him, it’d get that hollow ring out of the man’s voice.

Joe nodded shortly. Then he caught Jon’s eye and pulled his lips back into a grimace whose corners just happened to turn up. “A week. Then some kids from a village downstream came over, and gave me a wad of dirty felt they’d found in an eddy. One of his damn hats.”

“He probably didn’t,” Jon said.

“No, but that’s because that’s not the point he’d make anyway.” After another moment, Joe shrugged himself off the wall. He took one step towards the stairs, then shook his head and moved back towards his room. “I’m planning to ride out after we see Joan,” he said. “It’s been a month. Don’t think anybody’s taken over while I’ve been away.”

“You’re going back south?” Then Jon swore and reached out, but the other man already had his back to him.

He thought about calling Joe back, or at least asking what the man intended to do when he got back—wasn’t likely to involve looking for Steven some more—but finally he withdrew the hand. So he took a couple steps backwards and bumped into something softer than the door. Jon glanced over his shoulder, then looked again.

“You two sounded busy. Didn’t want to interrupt,” Richie said. His hands were hooked over the lintel. “Should I have?”

The door down the hall closed. Jon pressed his lips together, then sighed. He put his hands up and touched one to Richie’s shoulder before putting them back down. Instead he leaned his head against the other man’s chest. “No. Got our own nightmares, believe me.”

Richie hummed tunelessly. He rocked back so Jon had to grab at his arms to keep on his feet, then slid his hands into Jon’s hair. Just held Jon’s head in his palms so Jon didn’t have to hold it up himself for a while.

* * *

Joe didn’t sleep too well when he was trying, or when he was sober. Or both together. He’d laid on the bed for a while, then had gotten up and paced around the room. After a few turns, he’d decided he might try going outside for some air, only to cross paths with Jon in the hall.

The bed didn’t look any better when he came back, but there wasn’t anything else so he flopped down on it again. He turned over a few minutes later, and then again, and when every part of the bed was too warm to even resemble welcoming, he pushed his legs over the side and sat up, and rubbed his hands over his face. Then he twisted around, meaning to get something from his bag, and saw the shape on his windowsill.

He damn near broke the glass shoving up the sash. “God _damn_ it.”

“Go damn yourself, you impatient fucking bastard,” Steven said, scrabbling in place. He shoved one leg through the window and his hand scraped over Joe’s ribs before he got hold of the window’s side. Then he held still for a moment, breathing hard. He shook his head and blinked a few times, and gazed around till he lighted on the window latch. “Said you weren’t going to let me in.”

Joe still had his hands on the sash. He squeezed the wood till he damn near could feel the sap still left in it oozing out. “Said I was going to lock the door. If you showed up with your shit again.”

“Well, can’t do that when there’s no fucking door, can I?” Steven got his other hand in, hooking it over the sash, right between Joe’s hands. He glowered at Joe and it was dark, without much of a moon, but it looked like those shadowed patches under his eyes weren’t from kohl. “You had to go and burn it down. Honey, if this is what’s going to happen every time I go clear out my head, we’re not going to find a town in the territory to take us.”

“There wasn’t anything left,” Joe muttered. He leaned forward and rested his head against the sash for a moment. He heard Steven’s breathing stop, then start up again, slower. Then he pulled back and took his hands down. “Clear out your head?”

Steven sat on the sill and looked at him for a while, eyes clearer than water in a mountain spring. Then he swung in his other leg and ducked his head under the sash. He didn’t put his feet down on the ground while he took in the rest of the room. “Jon’s got a lovely place.”

“Wasn’t planning on burning it,” Joe said.

“Well, good, because Jonny will give you a lot of slack, but he might choke you on that one,” Steven snorted. He pulled his right leg back up to brace his foot on the sill. “Clear out my head. Get all the shit out. It was getting too high in there.”

Joe exhaled sharply enough to make it hurt. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Then he shook his head. “Still not telling me shit.”

“I _tell_ you. I tell you when I can think about it.” Steven shifted his weight again, switching which leg was pulled up. He wasn’t wearing his usual fancy clothing, just a plain dark coat and a shirt that was too large for him, with bags of it hanging out of his coat-sleeves and front. He’d taken the feathers out of his hair too. “I don’t think about it beforehand, all right, but I never see when I die, either.”

“What?” Joe said. He shook his head again. 

“I don’t see what I do,” Steven said, more slowly, as if he were speaking to a child. “Never have. It’s always other people. I thought that’s why you showed up. You do see that, don’t you?”

Joe ran his hand over his face and then back through his hair. He pulled together most of the strands, thinking about tying it back, and then just twisted his hand free. “You mean seeing you die?” When Steven nodded, he couldn’t help a bark of laughter. “I think I do, yes.”

Steven watched him from the sill, hunched over with his leg occasionally swinging. Then he straightened up so his head was against the sash, and put his right hand out to touch the back of Joe’s hand. He left his arm out when Joe flinched and pulled away, rubbing the spot against one leg. That was where a flying cinder had caught his hand, because Joe had been standing too close to watch the beams crumble.

“You cleaned out your head,” Joe said. 

“You asked,” Steven said.

Joe laughed again. “I _told_ you to.”

“So I went and crawled into some damn snake hole in the mountains, and threw up for a couple weeks.” Steven finally put his arm down. “Shat blood, coughed up most of my lungs, slept in my own shit till I figured half-drowning myself in the creek would be better. And then got myself all presentable, so you wouldn’t lock the door, and there’s a fucking pile of ashes, Joey.”

“You knew I wasn’t inside. Don’t tell me you were worried,” Joe said. He rubbed his face again. “I never have any fucking idea where _you_ are. Seems like it’s not that much to ask, once in a while.”

“And you asked,” Steven answered. Then he ducked his head back outside, grabbing onto the sash. He peered down the side of the house. “I don’t see everything you do. I don’t see you leaving.”

He leaned out a little more and Joe grabbed his arm and dragged him inside. Then got one arm around Steven’s waist, the man still twisting towards the window, and pushed them up to the side of the window so he could yank down the sash with the other hand.

“My—” Steven got out, still clawing at the sill.

“Your fucking what?” Joe said, pushing Steven’s head back. He bit the man’s lip and felt Steven’s tongue lash over his teeth. “You fucking brought something with you? I don’t want to know. It’s Jon’s damn house and he can lock the door, and—”

Steven scratched his hand through Joe’s hair, catching skin. Then he curved his fingers, sliding two along the underside of Joe’s jaw, splaying another two over Joe’s cheek, getting his thumb in between the frantic joining of their mouths. He pulled at Joe’s shirt-collar with his other hand, then shoved his fingers under the cloth and dug his nails into Joe’s shoulder. He always kissed like a demon fresh out of hell, but this time he wasn’t trying to drag Joe with him. He let Joe do that.

They ran out of breath and Joe had to tear off his mouth, rest it against Steven’s jaw for a moment. “You ever see yourself leaving?” he asked.

“I told you. I don’t see _me_.” Steven’s hands kept moving, pulling up Joe’s shirt, running over Joe’s back. “What’s the point of telling you if you don’t listen? You’re supposed to see that.”

“Well, I don’t,” Joe said, looking up. Then he closed his eyes. He sat his hands on Steven’s waist, feeling the other man’s mouth touch his jaw, careful, and then ask the corner of his mouth. One of Steven’s hands drew slowly over the side of his neck, like water swirling away from a dropped stone. “Next time you leave a note, with writing, and not more of your damn feathers.”

“Next time I’ll get you up there and peg you down again. If you’re burning down houses and then moping around Jon and his little baby pack, you probably have as much shit up there as I get. Sometimes I wish I could see in _there_ as much as I see what you’re doing, you fucking lunatic.” Steven kissed him, waiting till Joe started to turn into it, and then pulled back. He glanced to the side, then up at the ceiling. “So are you fucking me in Jon’s house or not, honey?”

Joe looked at him. Then closed his hands around the other man and pushed him up the wall, while Steven wrapped his arms over Joe’s shoulders. Steven was laughing like a loon before they were half-undressed, and loud enough to wake the whole place, but they could all go to hell for all Joe cared.


	3. La Casa

Joan’s foot thumped against the wall. She winced, then rolled over and let her legs flop over the side of the bed. Closed her eyes for a moment, then pushed herself up to sitting with a sigh. Her head hurt. Not too bad, but enough to make her wonder why she was watching the early morning sun creep across the floorboards in front of her feet.

The jangle and creak of a wagon pulling by the front of the boarding house broke her thoughts. She winced again, then pulled herself up and went to go dunk her head under the water pump in the back.

It was too early for the landlady to be up, so once Joan was dressed she rustled herself up some eggs and a couple rashers of bacon in the kitchen. The grease in the bacon cleared up the ache in her head a bit, but she was still squinting at the sunny sky when she stepped out into the street. She went down the way to the government offices, stopped by the apothecary and borrowed a few things, and then opened up for the day.

Half an hour later one of the poor souls they’d finally hired to do her paperwork knocked on the door and announced visitors. Steven pushed by him, lifting the man’s watch into the bargain, and wandered over to the corpse on the table. He clasped his hands behind his back, prim and proper, watch swinging down from them, and bent till he was nearly nose to nose with the dead man. “Did he drink, doctor?” he asked solemnly.

“Like a fish,” Joan snorted. She picked up a clean rag and wiped her hands, watching Jon wearily pry the watch out of Steven’s hands and give it back to her assistant. Then she came around the table and let Steven hug her. “It’s good to see you, but what happened?”

“Oh, Joe decided he doesn’t like feathers anymore. I’m sad, a very sad man about it, with a heart like it’s been crushed under a pile of coal, but what can you do?” Then Steven let out a long, forlorn sigh, leaning on Joan’s shoulder as if it could barely hold him on his feet. “He doesn’t like them.”

Perry had propped himself in the doorway and was rolling a cigarillo. He asked someone for a light and clued Joan in on where Jon’s usual shadow had gone. Then he cocked his head back against the jamb and looked at them through the first curl of smoke coming up from his cigarillo. “I didn’t say that.”

Steven ran one hand through his hair and then shook a fistful of it at the other man. He looked oddly naked without the assorted feathers, beads and colorful string that normally made a haphazard living in his tangled mane. The clothes were decidedly muted as well, without a speck of red to be seen, or even a fringe.

“Came in last night,” Jon said. When she looked at him, curious about the edge in his voice, he raised his brows at her like that was supposed to say something meaningful. “If I’d known—”

“Steven, you’re the one who took them out,” Perry finally said, exasperated. He’d actually come in two nights ago, and had improved considerably since then. His clothes were rumpled and there was a streak of dirt on the left side of his shirt-collar, instead of that eerie pin-neat suit he’d come in wearing, and he wasn’t trying to look through people anymore.

“Well, you’re the one who burned the damn things instead of giving them back to me.” Damn near pouting, Steven let go of Joan and flopped himself into a nearby chair. He pulled at his hair again. “Do you have any idea how many bottles of whiskey it took for me to catch that eagle?”

Perry’s lips twitched hard. He pulled his cigarillo out of it and ducked his head so smoke filtered out of the hand he put over his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

Jon blinked, then looked at Joan, who asked the question right back with a twist of her shoulders. In reply Jon just threw up his hands and moved so he wasn’t between the other two. Meanwhile, Steven’s jaw had dropped so it was hanging like somebody had knocked it off its hinges. Perry pulled his head back up, still rubbing at his mouth and looking as if a jawless Steven was actually a pleasant sight to his eyes.

“By the way, you’ve been charged with arson,” Joan said. She paused as Perry stiffened and Sambora finally poked his head into the room, then shook her head. “It’s just a local warrant. Didn’t seem like a good time to mention it to you when you’d just gotten into town, but you probably should look into that before you two head south again. I’m guessing that’s your intention?”

“Oh, _honey_.” Steven pulled his jaw shut with a click. He slouched down till he could rest the side of his head on one hand, looking mournfully up at Perry. “This is why we can’t have as nice a place as Jonny, you know.”

After a moment, Perry shouldered himself off the jamb. He put the cigarillo back up and smoked half of it to ash, frowning. Then he pointed it at Joan. “It’s my damn property. I should be able to do whatever I like with it. I didn’t set the whole town on fire.”

“You…burned your house down,” Jon said slowly. He put his hand up to the side of his forehead, then took it down. “Joe. You did what?”

“He was upset,” Steven said, hunching up defensively. Then he jack-knifed himself out of the chair and onto Jon, one arm snaking down Jon’s front to pluck at the top button of Jon’s vest. Between his hair and Jon’s, his face completely disappeared somewhere near Jon’s left ear. “Can’t blame a man, can you? It’s not easy when your reason’s gone walking in the mountains.”

In the doorway, Sambora had straightened up in a hurry and was pressing his lips together. He didn’t quite seem to know what to make of what he was seeing, but to Joan’s eyes he was leaning more towards the disliking side. Perry didn’t seem any more comfortable, smoking the rest of his cigarillo in one breath and then stabbing it into Joan’s table like he wanted to burn through the whole plank, but that looked due more to embarrassment than to anything else.

“I…just think you two could reconcile with a little less property damage, sometimes,” Jon muttered. He patted Steven on the head, then made a hash of using that as an excuse to get the other man off of him. “Who is it, the sheriff down there?”

“Joanie?” Steven evaded Jon’s attempt to push off his arm and slid his hand up to tangle in Jon’s shirt-collar. Then he looked back at Jon. He cocked his head, smiling, using his grip on Jon’s collar to make sure Jon was paying attention. “Well, whoever’s after Joey this time, you’ll use that pretty tongue of yours to talk them out of it, won’t you? He can’t help his foolish ways, and I’m not s’posed to fuck around with people when they’re not breaking the law for some reason.”

Jon tried again, putting his elbow into it this time, and finally got enough space to duck his head out from under Steven’s arm. “All right, all right. I’ll…see if I can find an attorney around there.” He pulled at his clothes, then sighed as he found the button Steven had loosened. “God knows none of us want to see what a conjugal visit in jail between you two’s like.”

“Speak for yourself,” Joan said, grinning. She laughed at Jon’s expression, as if he hadn’t probably had himself a good couple drinking nights with the two of them that’d ended up that way, then came up behind Steven and pushed him towards Perry. “Out of here. I do have some business to talk over with you all, and I can’t do that when Steven’s molesting my dead men.”

“I absolutely never. I have only the greatest respect for those who’ve had the courage to settle up with their makers.” But Steven went easily enough, looping his arm over Perry’s shoulders and tucking himself into the other man’s side. He snickered as Perry muttered something to him, then sneaked off the new cigarillo Perry was trying to roll.

Well, they’d reconciled, as Jon had noted, and it seemed as if it might be a deeper understanding than a simple inability to keep their hands off each other. Perry wasn’t walking around Steven like he expected the man any minute to fly out of town on the back of a raging tantrum, and Steven was sounding considerably more rational than he had in years. A burnt house seemed a cheap price for that, and Joan held that opinion as a professional as well as a longstanding acquaintance of the two. She hadn’t been much looking forward to dealing with whoever would come after Perry on the southern circuit. He had nearly ten years under his belt and was still sane enough, all considering.

“Probably not much of a dispute,” Joan said as she went back to the table. She nodded for Jon to go out ahead of her. “I’m thinking Joe just rode out before telling anybody what he’d done, and they didn’t know how else to write it up for the local records.”

“And here I was thinking you were just trying to get hold of him.” Jon was giving her those raised brows again. “Could’ve told me Steven had run off again.”

“Oh, that’s what you’re angry with me for. I’m not the governor, Jon. Can’t just wave my hand and have people arrested.” After she checked that all her tools were back where they should be, Joan tugged the sheet back over the corpse and tucked it in around the head. She wiped her hands again before heading for the door. “And I was trying to find the both of them, even if I didn’t think we needed to be bringing marshals and the army into it yet. Didn’t know where Joe was till he got here, so I couldn’t have told you where to go. Even if you’d had the time for it.”

For a moment Jon looked like he was going to contest her on that point. Then he remembered the man still standing in the doorway and shut his mouth. He moved his hand, like he was going to talk to Sambora instead. Sambora looked Jon over, then smiled and offered Jon the right of way. “Would’ve been all right for a few days, you know. You could’ve gone,” he told Jon. “You got your friends.”

Jon grimaced and looked down, pushing his hair back from his face. He went as if to follow Perry and Steven, then side-stepped and pushed Sambora with him. “I don’t want to go out again till you’re licensed,” he muttered.

Seemed like they needed a moment, so Joan kept on into the hall, and then into the office they insisted on her keeping. Steven was peering at some of the ledgers in the bookcase, looking like butter wouldn’t fry black around him, while Perry was sprawled out on Joan’s couch with his waistcoat unbuttoned. He put his hand to the side of his neck when Joan came in, but not before Joan had spotted the new bite-mark.

“Can’t wait till you’re out of here?” Joan went around Steven to her desk, then cursed as she remembered she’d forgotten to stop by the vault last night. She paused, knuckles on her desk, thinking it over, and then decided she’d just start with the map. She bent over to pull out her bottom drawer. “I don’t mind a good view, but not when it’ll tear up my office.”

Steven swung away from the bookcase, looking puzzled. Then he spotted the couch and went over to it in a couple loping strides, swiveling away from Perry at the last moment to seat himself on the couch’s arm. Shrugging, Perry shifted his arm so it stopped reaching for an invisible man and instead lapped over Steven’s knee while the other man stared at the bare wall behind the couch. “Oh, Joanie, you know waiting’s not one of my best traits,” Steven mumbled. He pressed his fingers to his lips, then put out his hands so he could flick the wall at random points. “Anyway, spent all my patience this year waiting for Joey to stop wandering in the wilderness and just figure out where lies his ashes, so hurry up and tell me about the gold already.”

“What gold?” Jon came into the office, followed by a considerably more cheerful Sambora. “So it is that resurrectionist again? You know, for all we know, he could’ve gotten drunk with a traveling _brujah_ one night.”

Sambora’s smile soured a little. He shouldered out of his coat and then, after glancing at Joan for permission, hooked it on the back of the door. “He didn’t drink. Said that was for the poor to make themselves blind to their feeblemindedness.”

Perry looked over, but Sambora had already turned to drop into one of the chairs. After a moment’s pause, Jon pulled up another chair, but just leaned against its back. He was standing close enough for Sambora to just tip his head onto Jon’s hip, which Sambora did, and which Jon took without looking away from the map Joan was trying to unroll.

“I thought that was all melted down now, anyway,” Jon said. “I did get my deposit. Is this just your curiosity, or is somebody pushing?”

“Don’t know yet.” Halfway over, Joan realized what Steven had been doing and almost changed her mind. Then she shook her head and just went to the one stretch of wall big enough for the map. It might make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up sometimes, but Steven was what he was, and that was too damn useful, at the very least. “He’s the third resurrectionist I’ve had to declare so far this year, is what I’ve been thinking.”

Steven reached back without looking and took the map from Joan, then the box of pins she’d brought along too. In a couple quick sweeps he’d tacked it to the wall and then pushed in a fistful of marker pins. He handed the box back to Jon and then leaned back to look at his work, his arms folded across his chest.

“Not a trade route,” Perry said after a while. He twisted around for a better view, then used his hold on Steven’s knee to pull the other man off the couch arm onto the seat. Steven promptly flopped onto his back, hanging his legs over the couch, and Perry just moved one leg so he wasn’t kneeing Steven in the kidney. “So that one cluster in the west, that was yours.”

He was talking to Jon, who nodded tightly. Then Jon pointed at the cluster in the northeast. “When did that happen? I don’t remember anyone going out there.”

“Just after the start of the new year. It wasn’t a government hunter, it was a drifter who handled it, so I don’t have a full report on it,” Joan said. “The other one, that was Lita. She said it was over money, too.”

“More Spanish gold?” Perry asked.

“Ah, no, placer stream. Nice shallow creek to pan out.” Steven’s eyes were getting hazy. Then he closed them, tight and hard, and put his hand up to his head as if it hurt there. When Perry noticed, he nudged Steven’s arm and Steven hit him in the ribs, hard enough for Perry to grunt. “Hope you’re happy I’m dying now. I used to not remember I always want to cut off my own head.”

Perry lifted his hand, going for Steven’s arm again, and then put it back behind him. He pushed himself up a little so he could twist out of his coat, then bundled that up and pushed the bundle at Steven’s face till the other man took his hand off. Steven looked at Perry, looked at the coat, and then lifted his head so Perry could stuff the coat under it.

“Could’ve spared you the headache and read the report to you,” Joan said.

“Could’ve, if Lita had left one.” Steven moved his head around on the coat, getting comfortable, and then sighed. “Run away with the wild horses again?”

After a moment, Joan just went back behind her desk. She pulled out her chair and sat down in it, and then pushed her legs out straight. Crossed them so only one heel was on the floor and let that be the pivot while she slewed her chair back and forth. She could feel Jon’s stare on her and did consider telling him to just stick to fixing what he had at home, but…that wasn’t too fair. They were regular drinking acquaintances because he usually would shut up when she told him to. “Think I’d call him more of a plug-ugly bull, but love does wonderful things to your eyesight, I guess. Anyway, you’re right, she just had enough time to send a telegram before the two lovebirds ran off.”

“You know where she went?” Jon asked.

“I do, but if she wanted to leave that badly, I don’t see the point in trying to call her back.” Joan twisted her chair around so she could see the map again. She pushed the hair back from her face, then pointed at the northeast cluster. “Couple army scouts went out afterwards and said she’d cleared it, so I’m more interested in that drifter’s share, to be honest. All we got was some hysterical farmers and a couple coins of Spanish gold.”

Jon pursed his lips. He leaned on the top of his chair, rocking his weight over his chairs. He’d had a good two months at home, the longest he’d taken off from hunting since Joan had known him. Not that Joan begrudged him the break, but they were on the short-handed side and it was about time he took an interest again. “Any idea who this drifter is?”

“Well, it’s either a he or a she, and they’re a crack shot, and know enough to aim for the head,” Joan drawled. When Jon heaved an irritated sigh her way, she pushed back from her desk enough to dig out the oilskin packet with those affidavits. She tossed it at him, watched Sambora intercept it, and then flopped back in her chair. “I _said_ , hysterical farmers. Good luck making any sense out of it.”

“You didn’t go up looking yourself?” Jon was picking at the string around the packet before Sambora even had a chance to hand it over. He had the affidavits out about the same time Sambora decided he might as well keep the packet, and just work on craning his head around Jon’s arm to try reading along. “No, wait, beginning of the year, then you were working down the river. And then I guess there was my mess, and…”

He frowned at one affidavit, then shuffled the papers till he could pull out the other one he wanted. Jon leaned back, holding both at arm’s length, his eyes flicking from one to the other. Then he handed the first to Sambora, absently shifting to lean against the other man’s chair as he did.

“The one common part we got was that whoever it was, they weren’t looking for trouble with the government. So didn’t see much of a reason to follow it up,” Joan said.

“But Lita’s gone now, and nobody ever did step in for those English boys,” Jon muttered. He turned over another affidavit. “No wonder they didn’t mind raising my wages.”

“You are one of the sweet-talkers around here, Jon. Want to try talking whoever it is into taking the government’s pay?” Joan asked.

Jon looked up at Joan. He had his moments where his face just smoothed out and it was still too pretty for his own good, but it wasn’t hiding the fact that he was a smart man, and not only that, a smart man who liked to use his smarts. He considered the proposition for a few seconds, then shrugged and looked at Sambora. “You ever been up around there?”

“Not that I remember.” Sambora tapped the empty oilskin bag along the side of his chair. He hadn’t expected his opinion to be wanted and he was trying to read Jon about what to do with it. “Though I’m open to new scenery. Never know when you might see something pretty.”

“I’m sure you’re always keeping a lookout for that,” Jon said, half-warning, half-amused. He sifted all the papers back together, then nodded to Joan. “I’ll take a look at these and tell you what I think. Tomorrow all right?”

Joan spread her hands. “Door’s always open to you, Jon.”

After a quick farewell to the others, Jon pulled Sambora out the door. He was already rattling on about the mining camps that peppered the mountains up there, so Joan expected he’d show up in the morning with a full plan of attack and a plea to help him hurry up licenses for his friends. A better sign than the last time he’d gone out, looking like the last thing he wanted was to think about what he did for a living. 

Joan turned her attention to the pair on the couch. Steven was still lying on his back, his arm over his eyes again, and Perry was staring at him, brows pinched together, as if he was actually thinking about asking how the man was. It was a different look for the two than Joan was used to, and for a moment she just took it in.

“All right,” Steven muttered. He pulled his arm away and watched the ceiling for a few seconds. Then he hooked that arm over the back of the couch and pulled himself to standing. He dusted at his coat. “All right, all right, darling, so where’s the gold already? I just spent the last week in the saddle and my ass is too sore to be getting kicked around some more.”

“Thought it was sore from—” Joan started, only to have Perry cough meaningfully into his hand. She and Steven both looked at him, which he ignored in favor of striking a match off Steven’s hip and lighting a fresh cigarillo. Joan contemplated going on anyway, then reluctantly reminded herself that she was the one with a regular job for a reason. “You all right with staying this far north a little longer?”

Perry leaned his elbows on his knees. He drew off his cigarillo, then took it out to nearly blow out the end in a lazy stream of smoke. “Well, I’m a wanted man down south, or so you said. Seems like it might be better to wait till Jon gets me that lawyer, and riding Lita’s old circuit will keep me occupied in the meantime.”

“I wouldn’t mind either. Haven’t been around there in years, but from what I remember, it’s a real pretty area,” Steven said. He turned about and looked at the map, hand to chin. “Real nice homesteads out there. And we are looking.”

“Looking?” Perry said, his voice rising a bit.

“Well, you brought down hell on the last place and I need somewhere to keep my rags and bones.” Then Steven grinned down at Perry, rocking back on his trailing foot in a drunken sway. “Oh, honey, you didn’t think I threw them all away, did you? Then what would I wear to go courting?”

Perry looked back at Steven, eyes narrowed to slits. Then he put his hands on his knees and got up. He shouldered by Steven, whose shoulders were shaking with his cackling, and then went out into the hall.

“Glad you came back?” Joan asked, coming around the desk.

Steven swung himself across the room and slung himself over her left shoulder, mostly letting Joan walk them towards the door. He was still laughing to himself, but with less of an edge to it. “Not a question of how I feel about it, you know,” he said. He was watching Perry stop just outside the door to wait for them. “I was coming back one way or the other.”

“Well, I’m glad you decided to do it where I don’t have to have you laid out on my table.” Joan looped her arm around his ribs and gripped them for a moment. Then she twisted under his arm to pull shut the door on her office. “All right, let’s on to the vault, and you tell me about all this damn gold I’ve got to keep around all of a sudden.”

* * *

Steven was scrabbling on the floor of the vault on his hands and knees, rummaging around in bags of gold like a demented rat, even to the point of sticking a coin or two in his mouth and biting on it. He had his methods and since they worked, Joan wasn’t going to look too closely at them. She stayed in the doorway because Perry, who would watch Steven no matter what he was doing, might just think it was funny to let Steven slip a few pieces of eight out with them and Joan had to keep the damn accounts straight. But that was about as far as she was going.

“So Lita’s gotten married?” Perry had given up on his cigarillos after the third one had ended up in Steven’s mouth and had pulled out a knife instead. He leaned against the other side of the doorway, whittling at a piece of wood.

“Why, did you want to send her something?” Joan muttered. Then she grimaced. She rubbed at the side of her face, then folded her arms across her chest. “She seemed happy.”

Another curl of wood dropped from Perry’s hands. “Who’s the groom?”

“Some buffalo hunter. I didn’t meet him for more than a few minutes.” Joan glanced over as Steven grunted, then straightened up as he put himself head-first into one of the bags. She looked at Perry, who kept on shaving down his stick, and finally settled back against the jamb. “Anyway, Cherie probably knows where they ran off to, if you owe them a present.”

Perry raised his head at that. He looked at her through that fistful of hair that always got over his eye, then over at Steven so she could see the side of his mouth curling like one of those wood shavings. “How’s Cherie?”

“Same as usual,” Joan said.

“And I hear I’m the talkative one,” Perry remarked.

“Well, didn’t know we were talking partners.” After a moment, Joan sighed and leaned her head back. She scratched at the side of her neck, then just tugged off her neckcloth. Damn thing wasn’t keeping the biting flies off anyway. “Look, it’s been a bad month. You want something?”

Perry was looking at her, mouth as flat and hard as the mesas just outside of town. She thought he might just ignore her till Steven got around to making them sociable again, but then he hitched up his coat-sleeve and slid his knife back up it. “I was just wondering how short you are. Jon’s going to be out for a while, you know. He’s going to be careful with his new…”

“We’re in civilized parts, so we’ll try to act civilized, I suppose,” Joan said, and relaxed a little when she saw Perry’s mouth twitch. She wadded up her neckcloth in one hand, then let it dangle out so she could twist it between her fingers. “I did notice. That idiot’s almost as bad as you—he only went and bought them out of their bonds, and then ran off till I damn near gave up and sent them looking for him.”

“So that’s why he came visiting. I think Steven was saying something about that, too, but I wasn’t listening to him much that day.” A flash of white showed behind Perry’s lips. He twisted the half-whittled stick between his hands, then made that vanish up his sleeve too as he pushed some of the hair out of his face. “There’s a couple freelancers who I see sometimes. They might be amenable to a temporary contract.”

Joan looked him over, and when she realized he was serious, she tried to tone down her smile. “You went into the mountains with Steven too or something? First time I’ve heard you worry about us government folk.”

“Do you want me to see if I can find them or not?” Perry asked, stone-faced.

“Be nice,” floated back to them.

Perry bit down on whatever he’d been about to snap back. His head went halfway towards Steven’s direction, jerked still, and then turned the rest of the way more slowly. “Go fuck your eagle.”

“That’s better!” Steven caroled back. “Keep telling me you love me, honey.”

Half a dozen expressions flickered at the edges of Perry’s face. He could’ve made his living at the faro tables if he’d wanted, with that cool slow air he had, but the moment Steven came into the room all that composure began to curl like paper tossed onto a flame and Joan never got tired of watching it. Perry saw her at it, pursed his lips hard and then sighed and raised his brows at her.

“I think it’ll be all right. Well, long as you think the south will keep till you get back down there,” Joan said. A little bit of a peace offering, because she did like him for more than being amusing, and a little bit of her sense of duty rearing up. It was nice to see them all together, and in better shape than for a long time, but the rest of the world wasn’t going to stop for the reunion. “I’ve got some of the old Rose gang coming in next week, since apparently the next territory over’s gotten too boring for them, and the army’s on a training march in the east so that’s their headache for a few months. So I’m just looking to get these loose ends squared away before anything comes up, is all.”

“All right.” Perry went back to looking at Steven as if he were trying to will the other man into a shape he’d understand. He pushed at his hair again, then put his other hand back and began twisting it into a tail. “Not worried about the government. I just don’t want to have to explain him all over again.”

Joan laughed, slouching down the jamb. “I don’t recall getting an explanation myself.”

“Well, you didn’t need one. That’s why I don’t want to have to start over,” Perry muttered. He was trying to get a leather thong around his hair, but it’d caught somewhere in his hair and he couldn’t quite get it loose. His lips pulled back in a grimace, and then Joan saw the thong’s end flip free. Grunting in satisfaction, Perry tied off his hair and then pulled his arms down, shaking them a little to settle his coat back around his shoulders. “So it’s all right.”

He was asking about more than whether there were enough hunters to cover the territory, though at least he had the decency to not slide a look at Joan while he was doing it. “She wasn’t happy for a while before. It’s no good sending out people who don’t want to do that kind of work, unless I want to get them back to bury.”

“Then she didn’t go too badly,” Perry said.

“You’re a gossip all of a sudden,” Joan answered. Then she shook her head. She kicked her heel back into the bottom of the doorframe, pressed it there for a moment and then pushed off it so she was in the hall. “Oh, Lita and I were…I’ve got no personal cause with her leaving. We rode along the same way for a while and then our roads went different ways. She just could have given me more time to sort out everything she left, but that’s speaking more to the professional side of me.”

“Not so much of a gossip if I read that wrong.” Perry could smile when he wanted to. It didn’t blister the earth like Steven’s, but it showed affection just as well. “But I never was in town long enough. Why Jon’s your usual talking partner, I guess.”

Joan shrugged so he knew she didn’t mind—Steven would’ve set him straight on that matter right away, but she didn’t imagine the subject ever came up—and then stepped back into the vault. “Jon’s interested in all of the things that keep an operation like this running, so he’s open to hearing me complain about them all the time. But I’m wondering whether he’ll be around as often now that he’s got his own to get up and going. Not that I’d make him stop that, because he needed something like that. Or else he’d be taking over mine, and he’s a friend, but to each his own.”

“Agreed,” Perry said. Then he turned to Steven, who’d been finished with the gold for a while and who’d just settled himself into a vulture hunch in the middle of the vault. He stared at the other man for a moment, then flicked something that took Steven in the right hip. That wood chip he’d been whittling. “You done?”

“Joe Perry, you are a heathen and an outlaw and a plain donkey’s asshole,” Steven said, getting to his feet. He kept his back to them while he rolled the joints in his knees and hips and shoulders, something like how a rattlesnake might work out stiff muscles. Then he planted his hands on his waist and looked down at the bags of gold at his feet. “Done, done, and overdone till I hope somebody’s going to bring me a long, cool soak for my poor cooked head.”

Perry took a step towards the other man, then stopped as Steven abruptly pivoted. Steven had his hands up over his face by the time they could’ve seen that, rubbing at his eyes and his temples and muttering under his breath. He went past Perry and Joan and into the hall where he stopped, still digging at his face. Then he heaved a deep sigh and dropped his hands.

“Well, that was certainly enlightening,” he mumbled, staring straight forward. He blinked a few times, while behind him Perry slowly circled back around. Then he looked half over his shoulder. “Just got here, Perry. Wasn’t planning on spooking already.”

“Do I need to call in the army?” Joan asked. She kept half an eye on Perry, who was looking at Steven again like he was genuinely concerned for the man.

Steven ran his hand over his face and then back into his hair, and then dropped it to pull at his shoulder. “No.” He thought for another moment. “No, it’s all been and gone for longer than your warrant reaches, dear, and not much to do with anyone here today, except that it’s got a sweet little voice calling out some of the nastier pests we’ve out there. Run it through a lye bath and then send for a priest to put it to bed.” 

Joan glanced at Perry, who looked as surprised as she felt, hearing Steven turn it away from his doorstep. “You can’t handle it?”

“I could, Joan. But I don’t want to right now, and if I know you, you don’t want to wait till I would.” Steven offered up an apologetic smile, but he looked about as resolved as Joan had ever seen him. For all his eccentric ways, he was harder to push when he didn’t want to go than a balky steer. “I just cleaned up. Can’t be taking on somebody else’s filth again already.”

“All right, then. Guess I’ll go find me a priest,” Joan said. She let Perry go past her, then glanced inside the vault. When she was sure everything was as it was supposed to be, she yanked shut the door and began locking up.

“What’s the matter?” she heard Perry asking Steven. Then something else, lower, to which Steven replied with a half-incoherent mix of curses and foreign-sounding words. Perry started to snap at him, sucked the words back into his mouth and then let out a slow, frustrated breath. “You’re—”

Steven mumbled something, over a sudden scuffling, and then the two of them were quiet. Joan gave the vault tumblers a last spin, so the click of them would give warning, and then turned around. 

Perry was up against the wall, with his hands on Steven’s waist, since Steven didn’t look as if he was going to stand up on his own. Steven had most of his head in Perry’s right shoulder, and the only hand of his that Joan could see was twisted so hard in Perry’s coat that the tendons in the back of it were standing out. He started mumbling again and Perry jerked his head down, listening, his brows pulling tight together over his nose. Then Perry looked up and saw Joan.

“Well, you know where the door is,” Joan said.

Perry just nodded. He shifted, moving one hand under Steven’s arm, so the two of them were turned more away from Joan. 

They were still standing that way when Joan reached the end of the hall. She paused, watching Perry’s head dip and rise as he murmured at the top of Steven’s head. Then she went around the corner and headed for her office. 

* * *

It was nearing the end of the day and Joan had just picked her coat up when she heard the door hinges creak. She glanced over her shoulder, then looked at the bare peg on the wall and the coat she was still holding a few inches from it. Then she put her coat back up and turned around.

“We can go out if you like,” Cherie said. She smiled. “Sorry. I knew I was catching you on the way out.”

“We heading for the saloon?” Joan asked. She waited a few seconds, then stepped away from the wall and turned around. Her hand swung near a chair and she slowed to take it by the top, then swung it out of her way and towards Cherie. Then she went back to her desk and dropped into her chair.

Cherie stood in the doorway for a little longer, then came into the room and sat down. “I had a letter from Lita.”

Joan nodded. She drummed her fingers on the desk till she heard Cherie’s sigh, and then she pushed herself up. “She’s fine, right?”

“I didn’t—yes, she is.” Then Cherie leaned forward. She put her hand out, then folded it back into her lap with the other one. She had switched to dresses again, a grey and white one that looked proper and neat, but she was still wearing her hair loose. “If you don’t want to hear more, you could say.”

“I’m not angry with her, you know,” Joan said. She looked down at her hands, then back at the other woman. “How’s the farm?”

Cherie moved back in her seat, propping one arm up against the side. Under her skirt her knees were sliding apart, bowing like they were back riding together. Then she put her hand down and brushed out a wrinkle, and her legs pushed back till she was sitting like a lady again. “Doing well.”

After another moment, Joan shoved back from the desk. She paused when she heard a sound from Cherie, then got to her feet when nothing else came. “Look,” Joan started. She turned to the window, glimpsing the sun dipping over the roofs of the buildings across the street, and then looked away, at the wall where the map was still pinned up as Steven had left it. “Look, I never was too mad with you either. You look better now.”

“I wish you’d get out of here more often,” Cherie said abruptly. When Joan looked at her, she had her face turned into her hand. Then she pulled it up, slow, and stretched her neck and shoulders. Her eyes half-shut and then opened right on Joan. “You like it, I can tell. Fits you well. But you’re still happier when you’re out and about.”

“Well, I get out often enough. It’s just I need to keep a few weeks out of the year in the office, so people remember I’ve got one.” Joan let her hip press into the edge of the desk. “I’m probably going out in a few days, once I get some hunters back into the field.”

“I heard Perry and Steven and Jon both are in town,” Cherie said. “When’s the last time that happened?”

“Probably about when I was still tossing your dresses out the window,” Joan said.

Cherie’s face stilled and for a moment Joan thought she’d have to apologize. But then Cherie’s shoulders shivered. She held it in for a little longer before laying her head back and just having the laugh ring out of her. “Oh, Lord.” She shook her head, then tilted it to look at Joan. Her eyes were still warm but it was like the sunlight outside, already failing. “I wish I’d been able to hang on a little longer, you know.”

“If you’d stayed any longer, we’d have buried you,” Joan snapped. Then she jerked her eyes to the floor. She wrapped one hand around the other wrist and twisted it a few times, listening to Cherie push the chair back. Then she moved her head so Cherie would have room to rest her chin on Joan’s shoulder. “I miss you, but I don’t need you here.” She felt the fingers pushing at her arm, but kept it tucked to her side. “And you needed to leave. That’s the way it shook out.”

“You’re so damn stubborn. And still blunt as a goddamn hammer.” Cherie kissed the side of Joan’s face and, when Joan turned towards her, used the distraction to hook her hand around Joan’s arm and make Joan let her push her shoulders under it. Then she rested her head by Joan’s again. “You know Lita doesn’t hate you.”

“We did talk before she left on the last one. I had an idea.” Joan put her other hand back on the desk, then pushed herself up so that she was sitting on the desk instead of leaning against it. Then she sighed and pulled Cherie up next to her, dropping her arm to the other woman’s waist. It was different holding her when she was in a corset; she didn’t bend so much, didn’t lose her shape next to Joan, and for some reason that surprised Joan for a moment. “You want to get a drink? Joe was asking after you, actually.”

Cherie snorted. Her hair was still soft, clinging everywhere it could. Strands of it were already trailing down Joan’s front, sticking to her pants. “Didn’t realize he knew who I was.”

“I think Jon keeps him up on things like that, if Steven doesn’t,” Joan said. After another moment, she gave in and turned her head so that golden hair touched her mouth. She closed her eyes. “Good to see you.”

“Good to see you too,” Cherie said quietly. Her hand ran down Joan’s forearm and lapped over Joan’s wrist. It petted soft fingers over the back of Joan’s hand, hesitating, and then wrapped through Joan’s fingers in a grip so hard and tight that their bones were creaking together. “Still going to watch over things?”

Joan opened her eyes. “I’ll come up and see you some time. I did say.”

“I know, but I don’t need you up there.” Cherie kissed Joan’s jaw, then pressed their hands into Joan’s thigh. Then she pulled herself up. She let go of Joan and began to neaten herself up, including braiding back her hair. “Whenever you’ve got time, Joan.”

“Let’s go have that drink,” Joan said after a moment.

Cherie nodded and stood up. She went off a few paces, still braiding and coiling her hair, and by the time Joan had gotten her coat, it was pinned up at her neck and she was setting her hat on her head. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll keep coming up to remind you,” she told Joan, smiling again. “Something I can keep for you, while you’re keeping everyone else.”

“Don’t remind me. Day’s over and I’m done with that till the morning.” Joan got the door and held it for Cherie, then shut the door behind her. The day’s work was over.


	4. Prequel: Alecia/OFC

Richie looked at it for a while, leaning back into the whore draping her arms around his neck, and across the room David let his fingers drift into some bitter chords. The girls winced, but Richie just smiled and shook his head.

“Thought I saw you playing it last time,” the stupid one with the guitar said, pouting.

“Maybe,” Richie said. He kept smiling, but it didn’t go further than his mouth, and he stretched his hand past the guitar to the lace barely keeping the woman’s breasts decent.

Alecia put her head back on her whore’s shoulder, resettling herself on the couch. She heard the other whores laughing, and way over, David slipping back into something pretty and light on the piano. Her arm still hurt where their bastard of a master had brought down the butt-end of his whip, and her head wasn’t taking to that angelica-whiskey mix too well. Maybe she’d give it a pass this time, she was thinking, and save herself the trouble with Mary back at the ranch.

“He _did_ play a couple times,” her whore said. “He was good.”

“Don’t remind him.” After another moment, Alecia pulled herself up. She paused as the church bells struck the time, then got to her feet and pulled her whore with her. “He bought one back with him, once.”

The whore looked sharply at her but followed Alecia up the stairs, quiet, just her skirt rustling along the wood. She liked this one because the woman still kept her wits, even though she had more reasons than Alecia to let them go, and there weren’t many who could say that. Although, Alecia thought, feeling her arm ache, at least the whores didn’t have banks chasing them down when they ran for it. A pimp or a madam Alecia could and would have shot by now.

“Don’t play at home?” the whore asked. She turned them left at the head of the stairs, then stopped them so she could pull her room key from her cleavage.

“No.” Alecia felt at her arm, then made a fist so the muscle flexed up under her fingers. Then she dropped her arm, wincing. “No. Can’t when you don’t have anything to play on.”

The whore looked at her again and Alecia looked right back. Then the woman’s eyes dropped to Alecia’s sore arm, going almost right to where that bastard had caught her with the putt of his pistol.

Alecia offered her a sour smile. “Ain’t pretty enough?”

“Oh, I think you’ll do,” the whore said, smiling back. She unlocked the room and then walked inside, slow, her hands already going back to the lacing on the back of her dress.

For a moment Alecia leaned in the doorway. Wasn’t seeing the whore, but then Alecia blinked hard and the broken splinters scattering over the floor, the bloody lines where the wires had caught Richie’s back, they all disappeared and she just saw warm creamy flesh unveiling. She cocked her head, listening to the piano downstairs. Then she stepped into the room.


	5. Prequel: Alecia/Mary

Mary always wrapped herself tight round Alecia, fingers digging into an arm or a hip. Her nails left little scabbed crescents for Alecia to find in the morning and grimace at when they crept low enough down her legs to be felt in the saddle. She never really said sorry for that, though she’d press her mouth to them, maybe peel off a scab with her teeth if she was feeling really worked up over some whore.

She didn’t think Alecia was going to leave her for one of them, or even for the occasional man Alecia climbed onto. But she did always think she was going to keep Alecia from fucking around right up to that edge, where one of the bastards who always seemed to end up in charge of her just might give up and shoot her. And Alecia never really promised not to do that. Couldn’t, really, not and look Mary in the eye.

Though sometimes, when she was wincing and squirming against the other woman, trying to breathe in that damn grip, Alecia would look down and see the way Mary clenched her jaw even asleep. The little groove between Mary’s brows, and the way she was setting her shoulders against Alecia, already bracing herself. And then Alecia did think about it, what it’d be like to just tell Mary and stop drawing blood. 

But then they got up and went out, under the damn sun that’d flay your skin off where the beatings didn’t, and letting out a little blood was just about the only thing that kept Alecia’s head clear. There was no way she could think about it then, and she didn’t even try. She just did, same as Mary.


	6. Epilogue to Chapter 1: Joan and Jon genfic

Joan favored leather, and black when she could find it, even when the weather was scorching enough to make it feel like heated iron plate against the skin. She never tanned much either, though she usually saw more daylight than Jon did, and all in all, when they were together people usually thought she was the hunter instead of him. And he couldn’t blame them too much for that one, because she would’ve been one of the best if she’d ever considered it.

“Not a day in my life,” she told Jon, stepping through the doorway. “And that was before I got to know the legendary Mr. Bon Jovi and found out it’s a shit line of work anyway.”

“Very harsh of you, Miss Jett. And here I thought we were friends.” Jon limped out of her way and then took hold of the door. He intended to shut it but found himself pausing to catch his breath instead.

Joan snorted and then looked back at Jon. Her eyes narrowed, but she held her tongue and just set her bags down on the table, next to the bodies. They’d thrown a couple horse-blankets over them and opened the windows once Jon had been sure all the stalkers were gone, but it wasn’t winter and a faint stink was already beginning to come up from the blankets.

“Asked Mary to bring me a couple buckets of roses,” Joan said, following Jon’s thoughts. She bent down and flipped up the corner of one blanket, then straightened up without any change in expression. “Mighty generous of you to pass up the doctor for that bondsman. You look worse than when you came back from the salt flats.”

Once the door was shut, Jon made his way to the nearest window. He let the sill take his weight as he looked outside; he expected the others to be elsewhere and as far as he could tell, they were. “I’m on my feet. I think I can afford to wait.”

Cloth rustled as Joan looked at the other body. “You can afford a hell of a lot, Jon, but you never do bother spending it. You know, I asked Mary to bring me a glass of something, since the road left my throat so dry. You want me to have her get you one?”

Jon glanced over his shoulder, then grimaced as he caught sight of the foreman’s profile. He looked down and began to pick at the bandages on his arm. “I saved a bottle for us later, so no need to bother Mary.”

“Oh, so it’s that way,” Joan muttered. She sounded more distracted than sarcastic, but the click of her examining instruments a moment later explained that. “Shame. I was looking for a reason to ask her round. Her or that one who was fussing over you when I showed up. What’s his name…”

“David?” After a moment’s trying, Jon managed to let out only an uneven cough. He might as well not have bothered, said Joan’s face when he looked at her. He shrugged and offered her a smile that didn’t apologize. “Oh, no. I think you’d better keep looking. At least, wait till I introduce you to Alecia and Tico.”

Joan pressed her lips together, then shook her head and bent back down to the table. “Damn. You could at least leave me some of the fun.”

“Well, then you’ll have to show up sooner,” Jon said. Then he winced. He nodded his apology to her and she waved him impatiently towards the lone chair in the room. 

For a moment Jon thought about declining, but Joan was looking at him with a certain set to her jaw and he finally worked his way to the chair. He had to admit, settling into it, that it suited his tired limbs better than that sill. Better yet would be a bed, but nobody wanted to use the rancher’s old one and the only other one available, Jon didn’t consider free either.

“Where are you putting up tonight?” Jon asked.

“Mary offered me her bed in the bunkhouse, but I believe you just told me to decline that so I suppose I’ll take the stable loft with the good doctor.” Joan stood up to shuck her coat and push up her sleeves. She gave Jon another disappointed shake of the head as she began peeling back the blanket on the rancher. “Why did you take this one, anyway? You’ve been due for leave for a good two months. They could’ve sent someone else. Joe or Lita, or even that big-mouthed shit with the ass-long blond hair.”

“Just as well they didn’t, with how it turned out.” Jon didn’t want to look at the corpse at first, but then he got hold of himself and stopped cricking his neck to avoid getting a glimpse of it. He wasn’t going to stare at the damn thing, but he wasn’t going to pretend it hadn’t happened. Or that, all considered, the reason why he’d not been sleeping well since had anything to do with the dead man in front of him being dead. That part of this trip rested fine with him. “I don’t know. I didn’t feel like taking time off yet, and when I met him—” Jon nodded at the corpse “—he seemed worried.”

Joan flicked a glance at him. “Ain’t worried now, is he.”

In reply Jon shrugged. He could feel her looking at him a little longer, trying will a better response out of him, but he ignored her. Eventually she went back to her duties, and he sat there and tried to convince himself watching that was better than wondering what he was going to do the next time Richie tried to talk him into lying down a little bit longer.

“Well, you’ll be putting in for sick leave now,” Joan said. She left her words trailing, making space for something from Jon. When he didn’t give her anything, she stood there for a moment, quiet. Then she spat out a curse, and when he started, kicked the floor for good measure. “That’s what I’d like to do to you sometimes, you pigheaded son of a bitch. Nobody’s looking to ask you to show your tallies anymore, and they haven’t been for years. And if it’s not that this time, well, even you aren’t going to kill all of them.”

She hunched over the corpse again, prodding at the bullet holes. Then she straightened up again, but Jon shook his head. Then he slumped down in the chair till he could rest his head on the back. “I know, I know. I…”

“I’d just like you to rest up once in a while.” Joan paused, letting Jon see her. Then she came the rest of the way around the table and gave him her rolled-up coat. She went right back, leaving him to work out how to get it under his head with about half a good arm, because she was a friend and knew to give him that. “Need somebody to stay sober when we go drinking.”

Jon snorted, then gave up on holding it in and laughed. He rolled his head over her coat till he found a comfortable angle and then let his legs stretch out a little. “All right. I’ll think about it.”


	7. Prequel to Chapter 2: Joe/Steven, with a side of Jon

Halfway through the second grave, Joe stopped to strip off his shirt. His coat and vest were already hanging over the spare shovel, next to the gravestone Jon had awkwardly appropriated for a seat. He went to add the shirt to those, then saw how soaked it was and just tossed it on top of Steven’s bag.

“I could work a pick,” Jon said.

Joe glanced at him, then at the sling holding Jon’s arm. Then he pulled his shovel out of the ground and went back to digging. Stifling a sigh, Jon laid his carbine back across his lap. He looked around the graveyard, then glanced over at the first grave. Steven was still down in it, only the top of his head occasionally showing, muttering and maybe singing to himself. Maybe most of the things buried here weren’t people, but Jon still couldn’t help thinking it was a little disrespectful.

A sharp hiss brought Jon’s attention back to Joe. The other man was leaning on his shovel, peering down at something in the dirt. Jon got off the tombstone and went over to look.

It was a greyish patch in the reddish soil, with a bit of a curve to it. When Joe prodded it with his shovel, it moved a little. Joe got out of the grave and moved up to the end, where he stuck the shovel blade in at a steep angle, coming in just under the grey patch. He began pushing down on the handle, stopped to watch the grey thing wiggle, and then twisted the shovel a little to the right. Then he got his foot on the handle and stomped down.

The head burst up snapping. Jon swung the carbine around and shot it just as its teeth were closing down on the end of the barrel, then staggered backwards, cursing. He hunched over and pressed his arm to his stomach where the recoil had kicked the damn butt into it.

“You should get that looked at,” Joe said. He met Jon’s look, then shrugged and jumped back into the grave.

“I did.” Jon looked around again, then gave in and tossed his carbine on the ground. He sat down beside the grave and cradled his arm.

“Want a second opinion?” Steven came sauntering up with…something in his hand Jon didn’t look close at, which he did have the good manners to stuff into his bag before he went over by Jon. He peeked over the edge of Joe’s grave, absently wiping his hand on his leg, and then squatted down with his hands on his knees. “Last dead one to doctor today, and then I’m free if you like, Jonny.”

The swing of Joe’s shovel slowed slightly, but he didn’t look up. He began working his way towards where the feet should be, if the thing hadn’t been too far along. Sometimes the older stalkers ended up so gnarled that Jon could swear body parts had shifted far from their proper places.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll do,” Jon muttered.

“Good idea,” Joe said.

Steven rolled back his shoulders and lifted his head. Then he pulled up his hands, folding them together like he was praying, and put them against his mouth. When Jon had first stopped by, he’d thought they were in one of their good stretches, but now he was wishing he’d just had his hurt arm to deal with. “Got something against my ways, Joey?” Steven said, half-cooing, half-daring.

Joe drove his shovel back into the dirt and Jon thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he flicked up the handle so it’d stand and looked up, his eyes half-closed in irritation. “What?”

“Just thought you liked my doctoring,” Steven said. His tongue was flicking around behind his teeth, reminding Jon of a snake coiling up.

A twist of hair was stuck across Joe’s right cheek. He scraped it off and then shook the sweat from his fingers. “You fucking tied me up for that, Steven.”

“So?” Steven cocked his head from behind his folded hands.

Joe narrowed his eyes. He stood there, one hand loosely topping his hip, and then he bent his head. His hair was coming out of its tie and it swayed over his face before he pushed it back, showing them the tail-end of his smile. “Jesus.” He glanced up at Steven, who’d taken his hands down to make room for the head-splitting grin on his face. “Look, _is_ this the last one? A fucking pack of baby ghouls is not what I was thinking about showing Jon before dinner.”

“Last one, honey. I promise,” Steven said. He shuffled sideways and had his arm draped over Jon before Jon could start himself into the grave. His breath nuzzled up to Jon’s cheek before he was trying to hang off Jon’s neck to reach out and pat Joe on the shoulder. “Just thought Jon’s too nice to get eaten on the first visit, so we’d better clean up.”

“Jon would just be happy with a soft bed,” Jon muttered. He threw his weight back and hauled Steven up before Joe could change his mood, then decided he might as well use Steven for a leaning post. “My arm is killing me, and I saw enough ugly faces on the trip before this one.”

Steven laughed, but he was looking down into Jon’s sling. He touched Jon’s arm a couple times, light, and then clicked his tongue. “Then you should’ve slung something pretty over your saddle and gone to town after.”

Jon grimaced and Steven stopped poking his arm. It hadn’t been that, but Jon didn’t care to explain, and that had been why he’d come down in the first place. For all that Steven had introduced him to more things he wished he’d never known about than anyone else, and Joe could be more of a menace than the things they hunted, neither of them minded leaving Jon’s affairs out of the conversation. 

“Still, flattered that you didn’t mind seeing one more,” Steven went on, nodding at Joe.

“Not my face the dogs bark at,” Joe muttered, tossing out another wash of dirt.

Steven’s eyes went wide. He pressed his hand to his heart, stiffened up, and then flopped backwards. It took a moment for Jon to adjust his balance; Joe didn’t even look up. Then Steven pushed himself up, kicking a couple clods down onto Joe’s back, and Joe jammed the shovel into the dirt and grabbed one of Steven’s ankles.

“All right, not here, not on that thing, and not in front of me,” Jon snapped, looking away. Then he snorted. He put his hand up to his mouth, rubbed it over his chin, and just laughed. “I really should’ve done that. Gone to town.”

“Go get your arm looked at first.” Joe tugged at Steven’s ankle a last time, then used it to shove the other man away from the grave. He shook his head and picked up the shovel again. “You can’t ride all the way back like that.”

“I know,” Jon sighed. “I know.”


	8. Post-fic: Alecia and Jon, with Richie in the background

“I used to like candied angelica,” Alecia said, lounging in the doorway. She picked under one nail with the edge of her knife. “My grandma gave it to me for colds. Didn’t ever taste that bad.”

Jon nodded, his nose still deep in the pot he was stirring. He had his hair tied back and his sleeves rolled up, the rest of his shirt hanging loose over his legs, and he probably looked more comfortable like that than Alecia ever did in the kitchen, but he still looked like somebody’s china doll. Easy to picture him putting fruit in a pretty bowl; hard to see him cursing and sticking a poker into the fire to stir up a flurry of ash, like he was doing now. “It’s something about how they extract it. The apothecaries, they put it through with alcohol and distill something, and then just give me the resin. If you want to see, I could—”

“Nah. I’m not that interested.” Alecia switched to her other hand and carefully pared smooth a chipped nail. “Surprised Richie is, but I guess he’s got his reasons.”

The poker went straight through the fire and knocked against the flagstones beneath, and then caught on the grates as Jon pulled it back out. He muttered and stood back, pushing a stray lock back from his face and smearing ash all over his cheek, and none of that did much to hide the flush on the man. He still could turn out Richie at a moment’s notice—leaving them to deal with whatever the whiskey left in the morning, Alecia thought irritably—but since he’d come back from his southern trip, he’d stopped _trying_ to do it. Sometimes he even looked like he was thinking about working to give Richie a reason to stick around.

Alecia did like Jon. He couldn’t help the way he looked but he didn’t act like he cared much, and what he did act like was someone who knew what he was doing and why. And given what she saw in the mirror every morning, she would’ve respected him just for that first part. But somebody like that should also know whether it was a good idea to have along somebody like Richie and Jon had seemed cool enough on that notion, given that he’d up and left in the middle of the night, without even a damn note—at least not to them, since that coroner hadn’t seemed too surprised. Most people would be wondering what the hell had made him change his mind, let alone talk the government into increasing his stipend so he could hire and train “assistants.”

Most people probably wouldn’t be watching a six-foot excuse for a cowboy tiptoe up to the doorway so he could stand there and pitch cherries at the back of Jon’s head till Jon turned around and got one in the face. An overripe one at that, so it smushed a little and cut the ash smudges with a streak of dark red juice. Nice look next to his blue eyes, especially when they were that wide with disbelief.

Richie grinned, of course, and flicked the next one towards Jon’s open mouth. He missed, mostly because Jon finally got around to charging the other man. The two of them went across the hall and towards the parlor. It wasn’t long before Alecia heard the crash of piano keys and David’s outraged yelp for Tico to come help him. She had to put down the knife so she wouldn’t cut off a finger while she was laughing.

Whatever Jon had had to do down there, it’d done the trick, so Alecia didn’t much care at this point. She didn’t much care for all the book-learning they were having to do now before the government would let them go out with Jon, but it’d be over in another week. And in the meantime, nobody had to teach her to go across the room and take the pot off the fire before it boiled down to a mess. It’d be a while before Jon got back to it.


	9. Post-fic: Jon/Richie

“There was a—down south they’re a little different. Tougher. You got to damn near take the whole head off before they stop, so we got these bigger-bored ones,” Jon said, running his finger down the barrel. He pulled it up and turned it around, and then grimaced at the smudge on the tip of his finger. He’d gone through that river, right, and his horse had kicked up a wave of mud and he’d meant to clean it that night. Then he’d meant to clean it when he’d gotten back.

Something touched his spine, just below his shoulderblades, and then ran the edge of a nail right down his back till it caught on the back of his pants. “You go south a lot?”

Jon glanced across the table, where his rags and oil and brushes were. Then he shivered as Richie drew his finger along one of his scars, the one from that goddamn two-day ride with Perry and Tyler. “Not too much. Just when they need cover. I like it better up here. Least you sometimes get some green.”

“I thought you got paid in gold,” Richie said, pushing up behind Jon. His hands slid over Jon’s hips, digging into the leather. “You’re supposed to be one of the richest men in town and you let them give you paper?”

“I meant plants, grass. Trees,” Jon muttered. He had to put one hand on the table as Richie’s mouth wandered through his hair, occasionally grazing his neck. Then he swallowed hard and put his right hand down and caught Richie’s wrist before the other man could slide his arm around. “Look, I—”

He turned and Richie was nearly to his knees already, dropping quietly down, his head bent so his hair spilled over the carbine. The other man laid his cheek on the barrel, his eyes nearly shut, face peaceful. “Everybody says all you want to do is work,” he said. He moved his head a little and his lip left a damp line against the steel. “Don’t want to do anything but kill those things, cash in your bounty, go back out again.”

Jon stared for a moment. The grain of the table seemed to rise up under the heat of his palm, whorls and ridges wearing into his flesh, and next to his hand Richie was looking up at him. “I think I was saving up.”

“For what?” Richie opened his eyes a little wider. He was serious, no light humor to cut the steadiness of his gaze.

“I think I forgot. A while ago,” Jon said. He glanced away. Pulled at his nose and then pushed the hair out of his face, and while he was at it, pushed it off his neck where the warm night air was making it stick. “I don’t know. I made a lot of promises to myself after—after I woke up, and they told me what’d happened and why I was still alive. And then I lost track of which ones I had left to do. I think I’m done with them, but I didn’t—I don’t have anything else to do now, so I kept going. I’m just—good at this.”

“Well, you’re not the only one who’ll work for it, you know,” Richie told him. He still had his hand on Jon’s hip and used it to turn Jon back towards him. “So what’d you do down south this last time?”

Jon looked at him again, and then at the gun pillowing Richie’s head. He leaned on his hand on the table, rocking on it, and then he bent down. The metal was warmer than he’d expected against his mouth, and when he lifted his head he didn’t have any grit on his lips. Maybe his finger had gotten it all.

“Killed a lot of them,” he said, listening to Richie’s breath blowing over his ear. He put his head down again, so his forehead was resting on the table and the barrel just fit against his nose and cheek. “Fucked up my arm some more, had a friend lock me up in his guest bedroom for a week while it got better. Missed you.”

The hand on Jon’s hip went slack and he had to put his hand down to hold it on. It jerked once, then twisted round and got his wrist, and at the same time he felt Richie’s head pressing into the side of his face. He turned his head and his mouth hadn’t gotten off the carbine before Richie’s mouth was on it. Their lips didn’t seal for a moment because the barrel was dragging up that side. Then Richie got his other hand to Jon’s waist and pulled him down, onto his knees, onto Richie’s knee, and fit them properly together.

“Good,” Richie muttered. He sucked at the side of Jon’s jaw, then pushed them onto the floor. “Good, you fucking idiot. Next time you act like you don’t like me I’ll kick you all the way back down there.”

Jon started laughing, even as Richie’s hands moving down his legs began bringing out the gasps. “I thought you were _coming_ with me.”

“That too.” Richie pushed himself up on his arms for a moment, grinning. Then he bent down and kissed Jon till he stopped laughing.


End file.
